If any of my readers are in tight with Ralph Nader or the kids at Public Citizen, I would appreciate one of y'all administering a swift kick to the head.
Due partially to a
Petition from Public Citizen, the FDA has pulled ADHD/Narcolepsy drug Cylert off the market. Now there was already a warning about Cylert on the bottle, and smart physicians were treating Cylert like lithium and just monitoring the impact on the liver.
Of course, not all physicians were so responsible and one person has died from it since 1999, with a dozen more getting transplants.
Medicines with potentially dangerous side effects should be monitored, of course. But pulling a drug off the market for killing one person who didn't follow the instructions on the bottle sucks. Particularly in a world where oh-so-legal alcohol is responsible for a large portion of liver failure's around 20,300 deaths per year, according to the CDC.
On a forum I found while researching this, a man in Thailand is already offering to send a desperate narcoleptic woman for whom no other medications work her month's supply. (No sense in linking there and making her easy to find. You'll just have to trust me.)
Naturally, if she gets caught she will go to prision for possession, possibly with intent to distribute.
Sigh.
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