Don't be a silent victim of a drug's side effects

I just read a new poll in Consumer Reports Magazine that reveals that one in six Americans who have ever taken a prescription drug experienced a side effect that was serious enough to send them to the hospital! One in six! Considering the percentage of people in this country who are on some form of daily prescription medication (remember, it's over 50 percent now), this is a stunning statistic.

That's 16 percent of the people who've ever taken a prescription medicine! What's more, the Consumer Reports poll also showed that a majority of consumers DON'T KNOW that they can (and, believe me, SHOULD) report these side effects to the FDA.

"You can't turn on a TV today without seeing a drug ad, but those ads never mention that consumers should be reporting serious side effects to the FDA," says Liz Foley, a campaign coordinator with Consumers Union (CU), the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. To remedy this, CU has submitted a petition with over 56,000 signatures to the FDA asking that a toll-free number and Web site be included on all TV drug ads to make consumers more aware.

TV drug commercials often rattle off long lists of side effects, which, though unpleasant, don't sound dangerous - dry mouth, headache, upset stomach, fatigue, etc. Yet the fact remains that many of these side effects can be deadly. Kim Witczak founded the drug safety advocacy group WoodyMatters. She named the group after her husband Woody, who died "of a Zoloft-induced suicide at age 37." Zoloft is the trade name for the drug sertraline hydrochloride, an antidepressant.

"As someone who lost a loved one from an adverse drug reaction but didn't know where to turn, [I believe that] the FDA should make it as easy as possible for people to report serious side effects," Witczak said.

This side effect reporting information is already mandated in all pharmaceutical ads aimed at consumers, and lawmakers have called for an FDA study to determine whether or not it's appropriate to include this same information in pharmaceutical TV ads. It's a typical government solution to the problem: Let's make a law so that this information should be on all the print ads. But let's do a big, long and expensive study to find out if we should make a law to put this information on the TV ads.

What an idiotic waste of time. If this information is deemed necessary on the print ads, why in the world wouldn't it be deemed necessary on the TV ads, which, arguably, reach a larger number of consumers?

Witczak has already worked with some in Congress to get the direct-to-consumer reporting language into the FDA reform bill. "If the FDA is really serious about finding out how drugs work in the millions of people who take them each day, it should be doing all it can to make sure the reporting information is included in the advertising - not dragging its feet," she said.

If only Ms. Witczak knew what I've been telling you for so long: there's too much money at stake for the government and the FDA to make Big Pharma do the right thing quickly. Whether or not the growingly vocal consumer and patient advocate groups can exert the kind of pressure necessary to move the government to action (in spite of all the lobbyist money that's lining congressional pockets) remains to be seen.