Top 10 Drug Warnings and Recalls of 2007

Tracy Staton — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:48:34 -0500

2007 has been a year of high-profile drug safety warnings. Check out this report for a look at the 10 biggest drugs with new, FDA-issued warnings or withdrawals this year. The drugs are ranked by 2006 worldwide sales.

1. Antidepressants - Various companies

2. Epogen/Aranesp - Amgen

3. Zyprexa - Eli Lilly

4. Avandia - GSK

5. Actos - Takeda

6. Provigil - Cephalon

7. Zelnorm - Novartis

8. Byetta - Amylin

9. Xolair - Genentech

10. Fentora - Cephalon

Panel: Give FDA power to recall

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 06:59:58 -0500

More power to the FDA. A presidential panel is set to recommend giving the agency the authority to recall products all by its lonesome. It would be a sea change; now, the FDA can only pressure companies to voluntarily withdraw their wares. The advisory committee--convened in response to the spate of toy, pet food, and toothpaste recalls--would also give the FDA power to cut off imports from companies that won't pony up all of their production info.

The recommendations are just that unless and until Congress takes action. And some say they don't go far enough; for instance, they don't call for "trace back," or a system to follow the production chain to find where contaminations occurred. Others said they'd be worthless unless adequately funded, and as we know from recent reports of overseas inspections, there's not much precedent for backing up power with pennies.

- read the report from CNN
- check out the article from the Wall Street Journal

Related Articles:
FDA can't guarantee drug safety. Report
Overseas drugmaking goes unsupervised. Report
Final FDA bill lacks new DTC oversight. Report
House overhauls, passes PDUFA. Report
FDA offers safety reforms to skeptical lawmakers. Report

Read more on: FDA news

FDA recalls

Top 10 Drug Warnings and Recalls of 2007

Panel: Give FDA power to recall