1999 was a good year for Merck.  In its 64-page annual report it predicted arthritis medicine Vioxx–Our Biggest, Fastest and Best Launch Ever!–would prevent Alzheimer’s disease and colon cancer.

In June, people on three continents will know if the pills they’ve been taking to prevent HIV infection were the real thing or placebos.  As the test of tenofovir, said to be an HIV prevention pill, nears the end of…

No doubt, 2008 has been a rough year just about everywhere, with slings and arrows targeting everybody from an ambitious plumber to the president.  Somewhere in the middle is the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), chartered by Congress to…

Tamoxifen is often administered to women after surgery for breast cancer in the hope it will diminish the chance of recurrence but, other than the test of time, there has been little opportunity to know if the drug therapy is…

For many people, confronting a colonoscopy is a test of both will and modesty but there is no doubt it is a life-saving procedure.  Preparation for this procedure starts early and involves both the body and the mind.  Preparing the…

Recent issue of ‘JAMA,’ the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association,’ says abuse and deadly overdoses attributed to prescription painkillers is on the rise, with rural America leading the way.  The study behind this alarming finding focused on West Virginia,…

It has been well understood that women with type 2 diabetes who take Avandia or Actos to control the disease are at a higher risk of bone fractures than diabetic men taking the same medications. Until today’s release of a…

Forget the mixed-up, jumbled crazy world of health care and medical insurance as we know it today and imagine that a different, more streamlined approach to health care were in place.  While imagining this more structured approach to medicine, add…

Yesterday’s meeting of the Prescription Project advocacy group members and Representative Henry A. Waxman revealed the incoming House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman is determined to make some changes to the way prescription drugs are currently being marketed to consumers…

Some of the most popular prescription drugs for treating asthma may be too dangerous for children under the age of 18, according to a panel of experts.  Some of them are thought to be too dangerous for use in adults,…

Great Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) was established in 1998 to determine the cost-effectiveness of drugs, surgical procedures, diagnostic tests, and medical devices, assigning a monetary value to the expected performance of each drug, device, and…

As many as 72 million prescriptions each year are written for drugs that never received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), costing US taxpayers, by way of the Medicaid program, more than $200 million since 2004, according…

The families of many children injured or sickened by the antipsychotic drugs they’d been prescribed are calling for the testimony of a prominent child psychiatrist whose endorsement of such drugs led to a 40-fold (4,000%) increase in diagnoses of pediatric…

Before a new drug can gain approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), clinical studies must be conducted that document the drug’s safety and effectiveness.  To do so, a very exacting set of criteria are devised and a…