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Are Serious Drug Side Effects Withheld From Consumers?
Side effects are present in all medications, some quite serious, others not so, but shouldn’t consumers be forewarned of the most serious, like suicidal ideation or mental disorders?
The days of patent medicine shows traveling across the US are long gone, and so are their concoctions that allegedly cured everything from a host of serious illnesses to elixirs to increase one’s desire. Today, we have weathered the scam artists, but if you watch enough late-night TV, you still might come across one or two.
However, we feel confident that our legal system, the vigilance of the FDA, and their watchful eyes are providing safe and effective medications for us—until they might not be doing that. The FDA also demands black box warnings when a drug is found to have concerning aspects related to it.
Professional journals, too, are on the job and provide the results of studies and experiments regarding new pharmaceutical breakthroughs. But, here, too, there is a concern because, as one editor said, they only print the successful studies; no journals detail the failures. Even in the publications that provide “successes,” is there a bit of cherry-picking going on? Some would say that is the case. But when the underreporting of adverse events is published, few of us know about it.
