York University and University of Toronto health policy analyst Joel Lexchin discusses in BMC Medicine how and why deadly drugs get onto the market and often take years to be identified and withdrawn, not only in North America but around the world.
“The finding that we are recognizing problems more quickly but failing to deal with them any faster suggests that some elements in the drug safety system are improving whereas others are not seeing any progress,” writes Lexchin. “Drug safety is the result of multiple factors starting with how clinical trials are designed, what information these trials generate and what may be hidden, how the trials are analyzed by DRAs, what is published and what is not, how well the postmarket surveillance system functions, and the structure of DRAs such as the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its equivalent in other countries.”
Lexchin, Joel. “Why Are There Deadly Drugs?” BMC Medicine 13, no. 1 (February 5, 2015): 27. doi:10.1186/s12916-015-0270-2. (Full text)
