Drug Profits Over Health

The subhead for “A Dose of Denial” (March 28) states that “drug makers sought to keep popular cold and diet remedies on store shelves after their own study linked them to strokes.” Are these the same drug makers who used safety concerns as an argument in favor of prohibiting consumers from importing low-cost prescription drugs from Canada and Mexico? If the answer is yes, I have a second question: Is this hypocrisy the attitude you want in the company that makes the medicines on which your health may depend?

Robert G. Hadley

Culver City

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As an unbiased (because I never worked for any of the firms that made these products) but knowledgeable person (30-plus years of industry experience), I am angered by this type of intentionally provocative “investigative journalism.” What happened here is clearly a real victory for the healthcare system that should be held up as an example of responsible behavior by the Food and Drug Administration and the companies that manufactured products formerly approved as safe and effective.

To attack the timeline for what in reality was a fairly rapid response to a very rare, albeit severe, potentially related side effect seems more driven by a desire to support the plaintiffs’ bar than to report information in a fair manner. I wish The Times were as responsible as the FDA and manufacturers it condemns.

Robert Bishop

Pasadena

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Your article on the failure of the FDA to ban phenylpropan- olamine, or PPA, years ago was a chilling wake-up call to the trusting public. The FDA in the 1970s found “enough uncertainty about safety” to prevent a final ruling on PPA, which, incredibly, gave manufacturers the right to continue selling it to the unsuspecting public, over the counter, for decades. Now you know: The FDA may have serious reservations about the safety of a common over-the-counter medication and yet OK its continued sale. The least Congress can do is require that manufacturers slap a prominent warning label on such OTC product packages, i.e. “There is enough uncertainty about the safety of this product to prevent a final FDA ruling. It may or may not be safe for you to use and give to your children.” Such a warning, like the cigarette package warnings, would be a major public service.

But the powerful pharmaceutical lobby will make sure it never becomes law. Buyers of OTC medicines, beware. Marketing executives, not physicians or scientists, often are determining what medicines sit on the shelves of your drug store. And the game is all about money, not medicine or safety.

Olivia Stinson MD

Manhattan Beach

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Your article on the tactics of drug makers to stall FDA action to alert the public to the dangers of popular cold and diet drugs was a devastating indictment of corporate greed. We put people on trial who threaten the integrity of the stock market, as witnessed by the Martha Stewart case. Yet we let drug company executives, whose actions led to devastating health consequences for scores of individuals, remain unpunished. It shows you what we value in this country, and it’s not a pretty picture.

Celia Wexler

Alexandria, Va.