Zantac's Maker Kept Quiet About Cancer Risks for 40 Years (bloomberg.com) 98
Glaxo says the heartburn drug doesn't cause tumors. But the company was warned by its own scientists and independent researchers about the potential danger. From a report: The small British company was sometimes called Glaxo University, because it conducted important pharmaceutical research that rarely resulted in profitable drugs. Then the scientists at Glaxo Laboratories created a molecule they called ranitidine, and in 1978 the company was granted a US patent. The molecule was new, but not novel. The scientists had, as scientists sometimes do, looked for a way to mimic the success of an established drug -- in this case, one that healed ulcers and could be used to treat heartburn. They developed ranitidine quickly, and the US Food and Drug Administration reviewed it quickly. Glaxo gave it the brand name Zantac. Glaxo marketed it as better and safer than the drug that inspired it, Tagamet, and before long, Zantac overtook Tagamet to become the world's bestselling prescription medication. For years, Glaxo counted on Zantac for nearly half of its sales and almost as much of its profit. The company won an award from Queen Elizabeth; the chief executive officer was knighted. Zantac created reputations and fortunes. It financed the modern version of Glaxo, which, after mergers and takeovers and spinoffs, ended up as GSK, a company now worth some $73 billion. Among its most popular drugs are the antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin and the shingles vaccine Shingrix.
But not Zantac. In 2019 the drug was found to be tainted with high levels of a probable carcinogen. Not by chance or mistake in a few batches. The poison is created by ranitidine itself. Zantac's makers and health regulators around the world recalled the drug, and in the spring of 2020 the FDA forced it off the market altogether. No company could manufacture it; nobody should ingest it. The carcinogen, called NDMA, was once added to rocket fuel and is now used only to induce cancer in lab rats. The FDA says consuming minuscule amounts isn't harmful. But tests were revealing excessive amounts of NDMA in ranitidine -- and a capacity to create even more over time. No version seemed safe. From ranitidine's beginning to its end, Glaxo had been warned by its own scientists and independent researchers about the potential danger. An account of those four decades emerges in hundreds of documents, thousands of pages, many of which have never been made public. Bloomberg Businessweek reviewed court filings, many still under seal, as well as studies, FDA transcripts and new drug applications obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests. They show that the FDA considered the cancer risks when approving ranitidine. But Glaxo didn't share a critical study. Over the years, the company also backed flawed research designed to minimize concerns and chose not to routinely transport and store the medication in ways that could have eased the problem. Glaxo sold a drug that might harm people, tried to discount evidence of that and never gave anyone the slightest warning. More than 70,000 people who took Zantac or generic versions of it are suing the company in US state courts for selling a potentially contaminated and dangerous drug.
But not Zantac. In 2019 the drug was found to be tainted with high levels of a probable carcinogen. Not by chance or mistake in a few batches. The poison is created by ranitidine itself. Zantac's makers and health regulators around the world recalled the drug, and in the spring of 2020 the FDA forced it off the market altogether. No company could manufacture it; nobody should ingest it. The carcinogen, called NDMA, was once added to rocket fuel and is now used only to induce cancer in lab rats. The FDA says consuming minuscule amounts isn't harmful. But tests were revealing excessive amounts of NDMA in ranitidine -- and a capacity to create even more over time. No version seemed safe. From ranitidine's beginning to its end, Glaxo had been warned by its own scientists and independent researchers about the potential danger. An account of those four decades emerges in hundreds of documents, thousands of pages, many of which have never been made public. Bloomberg Businessweek reviewed court filings, many still under seal, as well as studies, FDA transcripts and new drug applications obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests. They show that the FDA considered the cancer risks when approving ranitidine. But Glaxo didn't share a critical study. Over the years, the company also backed flawed research designed to minimize concerns and chose not to routinely transport and store the medication in ways that could have eased the problem. Glaxo sold a drug that might harm people, tried to discount evidence of that and never gave anyone the slightest warning. More than 70,000 people who took Zantac or generic versions of it are suing the company in US state courts for selling a potentially contaminated and dangerous drug.
Profit Over Safety (Score:5, Insightful)
This is standard drug company behavior. They always hide problems with their drugs. The FDA is easily cowed and corrupted to approve drugs and they don't do follow up studies.
Re:Profit Over Safety (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the model of profit motive for healthcare is not very sustainable. But as long as anything else is instantly branded pinko-commie socialism, not much gonna change.
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NDMA, was once added to rocket fuel and is now used only to induce cancer in lab rats.
Re:Profit Over Safety (Score:5, Insightful)
This is standard drug company behavior. They always hide problems with their drugs. The FDA is easily cowed and corrupted to approve drugs and they don't do follow up studies.
Most people when given the choice between a hypothetical safety issue and vast amounts of money, will choose the money.
This is the issue with the private pharmaceutical model of drug development. The pharma always has a massive motive to ignore the problems and exaggerate the benefits. The solution so far has been to add more and more onerous approval requirements, but it's fundamentally still an adversarial system.
I'm not sure of a better model, but the problems are more fundamental than people being greedy and corrupt.
Re:Profit Over Safety (Score:5, Insightful)
I tend to think that greed and corruption *are* the fundamental problems, and will infect any system we know. This is why it pains me so to see people looking towards socialism, marxism, revolution, etc. as the answer, because we've had plenty of time to gather evidence that greed and corruption end up infecting those systems just as badly if not worse.
It would be nice to have a real solid mathematical model of this problem, and I'm not joking. Either we'd come up with a system that minimizes corruption and greed while still producing an acceptable level of economic output, or we'd realize we're attempting something that's impossible.
Re:Profit Over Safety (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why it pains me so to see people looking towards socialism, marxism, revolution, etc. as the answer
Here's the thing though we need to stop conflating public oversight as being those things. Wanting a universal insurance system and removing the profit motive from the majority of healthcare services is not "marxism" it's just prudent public policy in the vein of modern neo-liberal democratic societies and fits within our modern economic models. It's actually very capitalist to look at a market that is failing and take steps to correct it.
We also can't really apply a strict mathematical model to it because this is the work of building guardrails around human behaviors. If we could mathematically predict how humans are going to act the world would be a more predictable place. We can make some educated guesses and do a lot of surmising but thats why economics is a "soft" science and now the common term is "socio-economics" because sociology is such a core critical component on how people interact with economic forces. Turns out people and businesses (which are just lots of people) are not in fact rational actors all the time.
The answer to corruption is strong, democratic, trusted public institutions combined with an educated and informed electorate. Anything else is just building on a creaky foundation.
The answer to greed is combining the above with laws and regulations that put limits on how much greed can actually be enacted. It's ok for a society to tell people and businesses you can make a lot of money but you can't just make all the money, all the time
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Except, no .... I don't quite agree with your premise here.
The want of a "universal insurance system" and "removing the profit motive from the majority of healthcare services" runs counter to the tenants of Capitalism.
Labels like Marxist or Socialist or Communist are inflammatory, because so many people have knee-jerk reactions to those as simply bad/evil (at least from the perspective of a U.S. citizen who was taught that those systems of government killed many hundreds of millions of people needlessly, in
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that means universal heathcare is a road to mediocrity.
If that is the hypothesis why does every other developed nation which has some form of universal system seem to get as good or better results with less cost per capita than the US?
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And they also pay less for the drugs, treatments, and medical devices than the US does, even if that stuff is all developed in the US. Seems you are proving the other guy's point.
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While the US does have an "innovation advantage" i don't think it's as wide as we imagine and it's not as though there are not gigantic busineses in these areas (AstraZeneca, Sanofi, Novartis,etc)
Also getting the newst treatments is worthless to anyone who can't afford it thanks to the systems we use and really if that is truly the case what does it do for us? Life expectancy for the US is down to 46th and on the metrics like cancer and heart disease the US is ahead but really by 1-4% over these other count
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I think you're, perhaps, overlooking the many ways we could reform and improve our existing system without resorting to government controlled universal healthcare?
There's more than one way to skin a cat, and we absolutely don't need to throw Capitalism out the window to make medical care in the U.S. more accessible to people!
I've said for YEARS that one of the big problems we've got is actually caused by government. I'd like to get rid of this idea of giving "protection" to drug manufacturers so they get ex
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Drug company idea, on board.
Insurance though, the age of "major medical" plans is over, the market is not as it was pre-Nixon and that does nothing to address the market distorting effects of the health market anyway. Consumers have far less ability to shop around for care, choice of professionals, generally have close to zero pricing information, it just does not work the same as say the market for cell phones or any other luxury good. When the alternative is death there's no price a person will not pay.
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No nation has made the choice to make healthcare more Capitalist NOT because "it doesn't work", but because they don't believe in Capitalist ideas elsewhere.
When your entire government is Socialist or Communist or a Monarchy or dictatorship, why would you suddenly elect to do healthcare differently?
I'm not talking about chasing "vague libertarian notions". I'm talking about the reality that America was founded on the idea of a unique political system rooted in Capitalism. So many of our failures stem from p
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None of those nations are "socialist" except by weird opinion of those on the right wing to taint the discourse. Netherlands, France, Sweden, Norway, Finland are all very capitalist, they just have more comprehensive social welfare systems. If that qualifies as "socialist" than the US is also socialist and socialist has lost all usage in common parlance, actually becoming the meme of "government does something = socialist"
Where in the constitution is the word "capitalisism" used? There is no such thing as
Re: Profit Over Safety (Score:2)
So apparently, the US suffers for the benefit of other nations.
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Glaxo created zantac while being a British company and they have universal health care
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Wanting a universal insurance system and removing the profit motive from the majority of healthcare services is not "marxism"
Yes it taking form those who did and giving to those who didn't is redistribution. If you your 'universal' system distributes based on "need" rather than some other criteria, than its Marxism.
it's just prudent public policy in the vein of modern neo-liberal democratic societies and fits within our modern economic models.
No its not, it is wishful thinking is what it is. Taking away the financial motive does not remove the profit motive it just changes the type of profit. So rather money you will have people chasing something else fame, influence, political power...
t's actually very capitalist to look at a market that is failing and take steps to correct it.
Maybe, provided those steps are to do things like address information i
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Let me guess, you still live in mommy's basement? Your worldview is extremely naive.
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Do you really think any sort of wealth re-distribution is "Marxism"? You know policies can be something you don't like, without lumping those policies with polarizing boogeymen.
Re:Profit Over Safety (Score:5, Interesting)
It's actually very capitalist to look at a market that is failing and take steps to correct it.
Maybe, provided those steps are to do things like address information imbalances, prevent monopolies (except in the case of natural monopolies), prevent fraud, etc. Certainly not when those steps are 'socialize it'
Healthcare is more often than not a natural monopoly. Outside of large cities, most places have exactly one hospital. And most entire regions only have a single hospital system that owns approximately all of the hospitals for hundreds of miles.
The reality is that when you need medical care, you usually don't have the luxury of shopping around and choosing a hospital. You need help immediately. This, coupled with a *huge* startup capital requirement makes hospitals very different from most industries, largely preventing any meaningful competition. How could any new competitor realistically disrupt the market? They can't. Hence, hospitals are a natural monopoly.
And because lots of doctors end up associating with those hospitals because of the benefits of having privileges at a hospital, you end up with most primary care physicians being part of the same system.
Thus, the only real remaining competition in healthcare is among urgent care clinics. The overwhelming majority of the industry is a natural monopoly.
Drug manufacturing isn't quite that bad, because drugs can be transported to the patient, unlike hospitals, and insurance can indirectly encourage competition by requiring extra approvals for more expensive drugs in favor of alternatives by other companies that cost less. But were it not for that, drug manufacturing would also likely be a monopoly by now (and might get there eventually anyway).
Regulating natural monopolies rarely works well, whether you're talking about utilities, infrastructure, or healthcare. The only viable solutions are nonprofits and government corporations. That's not Marxism. That's recognizing the edge cases where supply and demand cannot properly function and providing targeted solutions for those problems.
Re: Profit Over Safety (Score:2)
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Those are also state laws and not federal so it's not universal for the entire US but I would agree those probably need to go, along with things like the AMA limit of residencies.
That said a law like the "certificate of need" comes out of protecting against fraud and facilities that are acting unscrupulous, things that are really exacerbated by the for profit insurance model we ascribe to. Moving to a more universal, less profit focussed model goes hand in hand with loosening regulations like that since th
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You certainly seem to be taking the maximalist position that all taxation is Marxism. If that's not the case, what's the difference between using taxation to pay for infrastructure which benefits everyone and using taxation to pay for healthcare which benefits everyone?
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So, let's be clear here. Because you claim anything at all that balances or redistributes resources is "Marxism" and inherently evil, you:
* do not have have health insurance - that redistributes your premiums to other people
* do not carry insurance of any sort - see above
* do not drive on pub
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It also make's the term "marxism" effectively meaningless which ironically gives cover to actual marxists. This concept that we need to eschew all collectivism in the face of greed flies in the face of pretty much the entire concept of human civilization.
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You are a dreamer. Do you know how I can tell?
The answer to corruption is strong, democratic, trusted public institutions combined with an educated and informed electorate.
Strong, democratic, trusted public institutions are a structure. Corruption is a process. The best structures in the universe eventually decay to processes. The "democratic" portion of your visions implies some amount of process; however, you provided no process to keep the democratic process uncorrupted... which is where we are now, a fully corrupted democratic process.
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Maybe the poop emoji? Oh wait, you said model, not symbol.
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This is a really good question, since before anything can be modeled it needs to be quantified somehow. There isn't going to be a perfect measure of greed, but just spitballing here, most of us would agree that subjecting employees to a 10% increase in morbidity and mortality in order to increase profits 1% is greed. OTOH, there are any number of businesses where employees are subjected to risks simply by nature of the business. A case of that which comes to mind is tree work, since I need some of that.
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"economic output" seems to be the ultimate culprit. Us human animals are strange. We developed these big brains, to help us climb up out of the filth, get better food, move faster, and ultimately think intelligently and sometimes (thought not all of us are great at this) critically about ourselves, our place on the planet, our place in the universe. And we've used those big brains to develop new ways to throw ourselves into the filth by creating tokens, symbols, and currency for us to fight about. It's like
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I tend to think that greed and corruption *are* the fundamental problems, and will infect any system we know.
I guess it's a matter of perspective.
To call something a "fundamental problem" suggests that we need to fix it.
But greed and corruption is part of human nature, we can't fix it. We can combat it, and we can build societies that try to constrain it, but we can't defeat it.
So the best approach is to try to design systems that either de-incentivize it or try to harness it.
This is why it pains me so to see people looking towards socialism, marxism, revolution, etc. as the answer, because we've had plenty of time to gather evidence that greed and corruption end up infecting those systems just as badly if not worse.
More extreme versions of socialism make the same fundamental error as more extreme versions of libertarianism, they start trying to change h
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Good points.
However, these safety issues weren't "hypothetical". They were real. They weren't disclosed to regulators.
The public already funds a lot of drug development. However, drug companies capture this investment and turn it into their profit. (See COVID vaccines for a good example of drug development paid for by the public but all the profits go to the private companies.)
My personal view is that there should be no profit in medical care. All medical companies should be non-profits. (I know this is rad
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then you'd see even greater numbers of brilliant people going into options or derivatives trading.
IMO there's nothing inherently wrong with for profit pharma or medical in general -- it does spur innovation and investment.
However, the patent, IP, and insurance aspects create these perverse anti-social incentives. For example a 20 year patent on a drug is nuts. but it's even worse that they're able to slightly rejigger the formula to get an extension on that patent -- virtually the same drug, next to no addi
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The brilliant people who develop drugs are paid well but they don't profit. The drug corporations and stockholders get the profits.
You point out an important problem with for-profit drug development. They tend to develop drugs which will generate large profits and not necessarily the drugs that we need. Your example of rejiggering a profitable drug to extend patent protection is a good example.)
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The brilliant people who develop drugs are paid well but they don't profit.
What is being "paid well" if not profiting? They are trading their specialized labor for more tokenized value (money) than the value of the things the would otherwise be able to produce on their own if they decided to stay home an grow their own food, build their own shelter, and so on...
The drug corporations and stockholders get the profits.
Well yes, because they are the ones taking on all the risk arn't they? They are putting up the capital to buy all the research equipment, and the manufacturing equipment. They are paying Mr.brilliant bio-tech-engineer his
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Wow, look at your brain, it's SOOOO smooth!
Wait to parrot stupid concepts, grow up.
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Well yes, because they are the ones taking on all the risk arn't they?
LOL! No. That would be the US Taxpayers. [nih.gov]
Historically, the largest government investments in basic drug discovery research have been made by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has also contributed to the discovery stage by taking on some relatively high-risk biologic projects. Moreover, in part as a result of the public’s impatience with the slow pace of the discovery process, state governments are increasingly taking the initiative in this area. One such example is the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a state agency established in 2005 by the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, which provides grants and loans for stem cell research and facilities at California’s research institutions and universities. Another example is the Texas Cancer Initiative, under which state funds are dedicated to cancer research conducted in Texas. Beyond these public investments, private foundations are also taking a significant financial interest in the discovery process, facilitating progress by funding research in their particular areas of interest.
At the other end of the continuum is late-stage development, which is funded primarily by pharmaceutical companies or venture capitalists with some collaborative support from government sources, such as NIH. Such partnerships are critical in the transition from proof of concept to clinical development.
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Big difference between working for a salary and sitting back and collecting profits from an investment.
For the COVID vaccines, drug companies took no risk. They had a guaranteed buyer at an inflated price. Government even provided insurance for them.
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As mspohr mentioned, it's not typically the people doing the work of discovery that reap the profits. It's a bunch of investment bankers and hedge funds. What if the gov just payed universities to employ those researchers directly and the drugs go into the public domain? What would change?
We're already funding the research with our tax dollars anyway, but now medicare could pocket the extra money that would be flowing into pharma pockets. Plus researchers won't be wasting a bunch of time trying to make
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In a recent study, 7 out of 10 companies spent 30% more on marketing than they did on research.
https://www.ahip.org/news/arti... [ahip.org]
A lot of that marketing is for expensive direct to consumer advertising, such as those wonderful TV ads you get in the US telling you to ask your doctor about drug X.
In my opinion, it should be your doctor recommending drugs - and not based on which company took them to an all expenses resort for a conference or a fancy dinner recently, but based on the actual peer reviewed and pu
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Good points.
However, these safety issues weren't "hypothetical". They were real. They weren't disclosed to regulators.
Look at the summary again, "probable carcinogen", "potential danger".
Motivated reasoning is a powerful force, I fully expect that the decision makers at Glaxo were fully convinced that the risk of harm was basically zero. And once you convince yourself that the danger doesn't exist the non-disclosure becomes a lot easier to justify.
The public already funds a lot of drug development. However, drug companies capture this investment and turn it into their profit. (See COVID vaccines for a good example of drug development paid for by the public but all the profits go to the private companies.)
My personal view is that there should be no profit in medical care. All medical companies should be non-profits. (I know this is radical.)
Possibly, though you still need a model for taking drugs to the finish line (all the big trials) not to mention the large scale manufacturing.
Non-profits have their own issues an
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Just happened to come across this article about the brilliant scientist who actually developed the COVID vaccine. She worked for NIH. Paid by your tax dollars.
Drug companies reaped all the profits.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/0... [nytimes.com]
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soon you'll be reprogrammed
It's hard to take someone seriously with statements like that.
Re:Profit Over Safety (Score:5, Insightful)
They were not untested. Normal tests were done, but the schedule was accelerated because, at every stage, people actually prioritized getting the work done, the normal gaps between stages of testing and approval were eliminated.
Watch "Unvaccinated", which explains this:
https://www.bbc.com/mediacentr... [bbc.com]
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They grossly overcharged and made billions of dollars off of government funded research and development.
That's not ethical.
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the FDA doesn't have the budget to do their own follow up studies on every drug that crosses their desk. let's give em enough money and a strong remit to do so! tho the drug companies would lift heaven and earth to make sure a bill like that doesn't even make it out of committee.
Non sequitors are annoying. (Score:5, Insightful)
...was once added to rocket fuel...
Better not eat any red meat, there's phosphorus in it, which is used in making explosives. And say no to ketamine - that's a horse trank, you know..
The article is damning enough without inserting silly shit like that into the narrative.
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Ah fuck... I know how to spell "sequitur". Of course, this has nothing to do with my point...
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NOPE! You made a typing error and as such, all your points you ever made or ever will make are invalid. You shall be driven from civilized settlements and your blood shall be shunned!
Thus is the law of the internet!
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Damn. Well then, guess I can finally just go fishing.
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Re:Non sequitors are annoying. (Score:4, Interesting)
Criminal charges (Score:5, Interesting)
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And that would achieve precisely what..?
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Well if this was intentionally negligent behavior then that contitutes a crime and crimes need to be charged and prosecuted other wise what are we even doing as society? We prosecute crimes and people to set an example that there are things we do not, can not and should not accept as acceptable. Can't just let it slide because "it's a lot of work"
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And that would achieve precisely what..?
Discouraging future decision-makers from making decisions without the appropriate level of thought and care for human life by ensuring that they have their own skin in the game.
If you're given the mandate to maximize X and are told by that you'll face no personal liability for the decisions you make (other than getting fired if any of them blow up in your face while you're still employed there), preserving human life may not be at the top of your priority list. Prison time fixes that by creating personal li
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I believe the hope is that if an individual sees the possibility of consequences for them personally (other than getting fired) they will be less motivated to take the money and hope for the best. I'm not sure how effective it will be; my understanding is that behavior is affected more by perception of the chance of getting caught than by severity of punishments that appear unlikely. But this situation (misreporting risks) does feel a bit like fraud, so criminal charges don't feel entirely inappropriate.
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And that would achieve precisely what..?
Send all the current CEOs of similar companies scurrying to put things right...
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My first house had lead water pipes, I immediately had them lined with polyethylene, should I have spent my time finding out which Victorian builder's descendent I should sue? for "Accountability" natch..
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Yes, and it was specious at best, more an (over) reaction to the typical Septic "throw them in jail" .
A. the original article turns out to be completely false. So everything is moot really.
B. see A.
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The problem isn't that there were unexpected problems with the drug; the problem is the company hid them when they found out. Drug companies have to monitor their drugs to look for this kind problem, and they are required to tell the regulators about what they see.
To use your analogy, you probably don't have a case against the Victorian builders who put in the lead pipe. But in many cases, house sellers are legally required to tell the buyer about some conditions related to their house, including things
yeah, skeptical (Score:3)
I have my doubts that somehow ranitidine itself creates the contamination. I also have doubts that in the amounts normally ingested it is any more carcinogenic than say broccoli. E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/ed... [theguardian.com]
Re:yeah, skeptical (Score:4, Informative)
According to this [nih.gov] there are multiple studies indicating that ranitidine is a precursor for NDMA. How carcinogenic it is compared to other stuff is an interesting question; there's a lot of zero-tolerance in the radiation/carcinogen space (or so it seems to me).
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It's not implausible given the structure of ranitidine, which contains a nitroso group that could react to give the NDMA. It seems to be forming from the drug as formulated (i.e. the pill with active drug plus all the other stuff it's packaged with), since there are studies showing the level goes up on storage and goes up faster if it's stored at higher temperature. The detected level is also much higher when using an analytical met
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I have my doubts that somehow ranitidine itself creates the contamination.
Given that it was found in actual medicine that was out in the wild, are you alleging that someone added it after the fact or that it's a byproduct of the manufacturing process? Because the recall was not initiated in response to the theory that this might happen. It was initiated in response to the fact that it was actually happening.
I also have doubts that in the amounts normally ingested it is any more carcinogenic than say broccoli.
I have doubts that you're correct, based on the numbers available and the classifications applied to these carcinogens.
By the numbers, I don't think it's unfair to say that ND
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Thank you for the info.
The contamination could conceivably have occurred as contamination during the production, as has happened in many other cases, and not necessarily as a decomposition product of the ranitidine under normal storage conditions. According to what you say, decomposition does seem to be suspect, but not clear under what conditions.
Screwing Each Other Over (Score:1)
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...until that was exactly the escape method they used in the 4th movie.
The direction of that scene makes it unambiguously clear that the individual alien was not voluntarily sacrificing itself for the good of the collective/hive. That individual was screwed over by the other two in order to improve their escape percentage.
Forget about that (Score:2)
Whooptie doo... What I know about Zantac 75 is that if you drink a lot of beer and shove some pizza and nachos in there and
But one thing is for sure. Don't stop eating beer, pizza, and nachos.... they COULDN'T be the problem, right?
Just eat alllll the bad foods you want and take Zantac.
Summary so far: Zantac allows you to continue killin
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Summary so far: Zantac allows you to continue killing yourself with bad nutrition, you don't need to get cancer.
People used Zantac for all kinds of reasons unconnected with consuming excessive drink and pizza. I used to use it quite a lot until I figured out that my metabolism had become intolerant of most milk.
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Just from my own experience, I'd say all that beer and natchos... hey.... it'll catch up to you eventually. Also, on a side note, I stopped eating "natural" Icelandic or Greek style yogurt and
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Again, YMMV, but I'm definitely with you on the dairy issues.
My dairy issues were resolved by consuming goat milk or A2 milk.
Case was dismissed in December (Score:2)
We can argue over whether Bloomberg is a reliable source here, but the case was dismissed late last year with essentially a finding that the science behind the lawsuit was garbage and it was entirely litigation motivated. Check out the op-ed in the WSJ which simply recounts the facts discovered during trial from the 341 page ruling that essentially the lab that did the testing were incompetent (and are finally being criticized by the FDA as well).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/t... [wsj.com]
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the science behind the lawsuit was garbage and it was entirely litigation motivated.
No shit Sherlock.
Nothing is safe ... (Score:2)
Of course the scientists are going to warn about any potential side effects, that's not a reason not release a medicine. If needs cold storage it won't be OTC, so unless they know they are over the legal limits they are never going to do that. Nothing is absolutely safe.
Everything except the mention of the critical study is rabble rousing. Did they know that at the time of consumption the levels could be over the legal limit? I can't make that conclusion from the useless reporter, lots of tendentious langua
Evil pharma! (Score:1)
Putting profits over people, willing to subject people to horrible side effects in pursuit of a buck.
Oh, but sure; I'm sure the vaccine was entirely safe and effective. Well, not effective, but safe. Ish.
Pay no attention to all those athletes dropping dead though.
I wonder if you tards ever actually hear how stupid you sound to the rest of us.
Malpractice Keeps Drug Costs High (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
inverted totalitarianism (Score:4, Informative)
The oligarchy refuse to pay taxes while shoving remaining “good” jobs to global regions of least cost leaving once highly productive, educated, self sufficient areas as deindustrialized zones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . The social costs burden us with rampant homelessness, the opioid crisis, the widest chasm in wealth since the pharaohs, lack of public mental or physical heath options, debt peonage for college graduates, escalating crime including gun violence, loss of social safety nets, and rising right wing fascism. Make no mistake, both left and right political parties are lock step in their worship of corporate oligarchs – one side is Christianized fascist, the other, “feel your pain” faux liberalism. Neither side has the interest of the citizenry in mind. We are following the path of Yugoslavia in 80’s or the Weimar republic in the 1920’s. When the dollar is replaced as the global reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to manipulate markets directly or via is proxy the IMF. A collapsing dollar will do to the US exactly what it did to the UK when the pound lost the Global reserve currency in the 1950’s; a violent contraction of empire followed by decades of recession. Professor of History, Alfred Mccoy, predicts this will happen in 2030. https://canadiandimension.com/... [canadiandimension.com] get ready for the ride.
Re: (Score:3)
https://canadiandimension.com/... [canadiandimension.com]
"The U.S. demand that Germany and other European states halt the importation of Russian gas likewise saw the Europeans ignore Washington. China and Russia, traditionally antagonistic, are now working in tandem to free themselves from the dollar. Moscow has transferred $100 billion of its reserves into Chinese yuan"
That pre-Covid pre-Ukraine article aged well.
Bad process control has caused cancer before. (Score:3)
Agent Orange if made exactly correctly was free of dioxin but if you poorly control the temperature during manufacturer and it got too hot then there is a out of control reaction that creates dioxin. The agent orange raw herbicides made for the US farm market did not have dioxin because they small set of companies making that were extremely careful and got rid of bad batches. The companies that started making it to be used in Agent orange knew a lot less about how it process went bad and were a lot less careful about making it and getting rid of bad batches, and made a lot of dioxins. Because of the challenges making the herbicide with the hard to control process as soon as there was another viable produce to replace it it was banned is not made/used anymore.
It is quite possible that quite a few of the drugs/herbicides and other similar items have tricky manufacturing processes that are difficult to control and may produce cancer causing ingredients in the final product.. And drugs/herbicides have processes/reactions seem to be much harder to control than others, so the subset that are difficult to make correctly will need to be banned if there are viable substitutes that are easier to manufacture correctly. This sort of issue becomes worse once you get to generic manufacturers that may or may not know how hard to make right the given drug is.
If you have one of those hard to produce correctly products but you are making lots of money with it, criminal companies/CEO's are going to want to cover up the risks. No one is going to admit that that other product that their company does not produce is less dangerous and/or easier to make.
See J&J baby powder, where mined talc was known to often come with asbestos, but clearly J&J wanted to sell their produce so worked hard to cover it up.
Me too (Score:3)
All of that for a me too drug to replace the safe, effective, and out of patent Cimetidine (Tagamet) which has the same mechanism of action and does not appear to cause cancer.
Early 2000s (Score:2)