Recalling Drugs
Recalling Drugs
Recalling Drugs
You strongly anticipate that when you are handed a doctor's prescription, or purchase tablets from a chemist, you in safe hands. This is not always so.
A recall of particular types of Tylenol and Motrin, put out by Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), which commenced in January 2010, brought back memories of the 1982 Tylenol recall. It affected as many as 21 million packages which were in circulation at the time.
Johnson & Johnson's reaction set the standard for other companies. It did not spare any expense to protect the public from what turned out to be only a small quantity of contaminated items.
Before 1962, there was no method in the United States to approve drugs before they were placed in the market. The 1906 Food and Drugs Act required drugs to be accurately and honestly labeled, but that was mainly the limit of the oversight.
After it was discovered in 1961, that Thalidomide was the cause of horrendous birth defects, things changed. Approximately between 10,000 to 20,000 people were affected, in what is thought to be one of the worst medical disasters ever.
The Kefauver-Harris Drug Amendments were passed in 1962, after the Thalidomide scare moved the U.S. Congress to act, granting oversight of drugs to the FDA and demanding manufacturers prove that their drugs are safe for human consumption.
Drug recalls have been wide ranging, from things such as diet pills that caused heart disease and pulmonary problems. Suits filed against a company providing the recalled diet pills was in excess of $21 billion.
A tablet, used for 30 years to prevent miscarriages, was found to have a connection to a rare tumour that kept being discovered in the daughters of women who had used the medication.
A product prescribed to patients as a treatment for high cholesterol, has allegedly killed up to 100,000 people, from the effects of a serious muscle disorder.
A recall of a pain relief for arthritis, was found responsible for an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, is now considered the biggest drug recall ever. Doctors prescribed the tablet to over 20 million people. The litigation was $4.8 billion, alongside $1 billion in legal expenses.
A quantity of generic prescription drugs were recalled when it was found that some products were too strong and others not strong enough.
A widely-used antihistamine had yearly sales of approximately $440 m in the same year it was recalled. It is thought that over 100 million patients worldwide made use of this medication.
The list of recalled drugs goes on and is certain to increase in the future. After all there are no guarantees in spite of the laws to the contrary.
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