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In Big Pharma’s constant search for the magic pill, the one that promises relief or a cure for chronic debilitating disease, concerns about side effects, even potentially fatal ones are often dismissed as aberrations, anomalies or not clinically significant. For type 2 diabetics, the two latest magic pills that promised […]

There have been a number of recent developments in the coordinated multi-district federal proceedings (MDL No. 1871) pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer of Avandia (rosiglitazone): Congestive Heart Failure Claims – Judge Rufe held hearings in late July on […]

Diabetes is a scourge that has prematurely taken my father and other dear members of my family.  It is a disease that many others in my family deal with each and every day.  We leave in fear of the devastating complications suffered by our loved ones – amputations, heart attacks, […]

Two very popular and enormously successful diabetes drugs have come under intense regulatory scrutiny over the past year. Avandia and Actos were developed and prescribed to treat type 2 diabetes. In people with type 2 diabetes the body does not make enough insulin, and the insulin that the body produces […]

The Food and Drug Administration and European drug regulators made a major announcement today that will affect more than half a million Type 2 diabetics currently using Avandia, or its generic form rosiglitazone, to control their blood sugar. Although manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, has continued to stand behind the drug, Avandia has […]

The FDA panel of 33 medical experts recommended that Avandia remain on the market. This decision was made even though Avandia and the clinical trials conducted about the drug are shrouded in suspicion and doubts about the impartiality of results. The FDA panel, however, was anything but unanimous. Only 17 […]

Internal documents obtained by the New York Times reveal that not only did GSK know of the cardiac risks associated with its drug as soon as Avandia was introduced in 1999, but that it fought intensively to keep those risks from becoming public. According to the Times, in the fall […]

At least two medical studies on the anti-diabetic drug Avandia (rosiglitazone) suggest that the drug is related to an increased risk of death or disability from heart attack or stroke. In fact, days ago an FDA physician and a leader in the FDA’s cardiovascular division, Dr. Thomas Marciniak, blasted one […]

Suppose that when a product malfunctions it was acceptable for the manufacturer to pay “experts”, recognized and notable professionals; to write articles, opinion letters, and studies, that spoke of the product’s safety. Articles that dispelled any notion that the product was really what was causing the problem. Suppose that each […]

The good news is, the FDA and its drug advisory committee are airing their dirty laundry in public. But that’s the only good news. Before a near-unanimous vote to recommend keeping the controversial diabetes drug Avandia on the market, advisers and officials of the Food and Drug Administration openly debated […]