How The US Drug Safety System Should Be Changed

... In the May issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Brian L. Strom, MD, MPH, Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, analyzes the limitations of the current system of drug-safety monitoring and proposes a solution that addresses overly aggressive early marketing practices; an absence of incentives to complete post-marketing safety studies; direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising that can promote non-critical use of "blockbuster" drugs; the current trend toward delaying drug approval; and public misunderstanding about the safety of drugs... click link for more info. ...