A Rx ISK is born...con David Healy y much@s más.

The RxISK website calls it “the first free, independent website where patients, doctors, and pharmacists can research prescription drugs and easily report a drug side effect–identifying problems and possible solutions earlier than is currently happening.” The website has pages dedicated to suicide, sexual dysfunction and “violence and extreme acts.” 

 The website adds: “Drug side effects are now a leading cause of death, disability, and illness. Experts estimate that only 1–10% of ‘serious’ adverse events (those causing hospitalization, disability or death) are ever reported. Not to mention the millions of ‘medically mild’ adverse drug events that occur each year–ones that compromise a person’s concentration, functioning, judgment and ability to care.” 

 RxISK points out that “most data on prescription drugs is owned by the multinational pharmaceutical companies who run almost all clinical drug trials (60% of which are never reported). They simply are not sharing data that may affect their bottom lines. There is a gap in the data that only patients, doctors and pharmacists can fill.”



One of the founders of RxISK is David Healy, a professor of psychiatry and authority on the side effects of psychiatric drugs.

Web_o_teca: Dr. David Healy blog

Unfortunately, pharmaceutical firms are only part of the problem. As the science journalist Charles Seife has reported in Scientific American, government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration–and researchers themselves–often enable drug companies’ unethical behavior. 

 In “How Drug Company Money Is Undermining Science,” Seife notes that “neither scientific institutions nor the scientists themselves have shown a willingness to police conflicts of interest in research” involving medications. See these hard-hitting articles by Seife and colleagues here, here and here. 

 The corruption of modern medicine by the pharmaceutical industry has also been examined in books such as Pharmageddon by Healy,

Ratón de biblioteca: PHARMAGEDDON / David Healy

 The Truth About the Drug Companies by Marcia Angell, 

MARCIA ANGELL: La verdad acerca de la industria farmacéutica. Como nos engañan y que hacer al respecto

Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre, 

Ratón de biblioteca: "Bad Pharma" / Ben Goldacre

Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker (which I have written about) and Side Effects by Alison Bass

Ratón de biblioteca: SIDE EFFECTS

Más