Government’s Role in Vioxx Scandal

Re “Early Vioxx Alarms Alleged,” Nov. 19: Well, well. A government official warns that our drug oversight system leaves Americans virtually defenseless against dangerous pharmaceuticals. Seems as if the medical community is fast losing its credibility when it warns patients to beware of herbal supplements that lack Food and Drug Administration approval. Instead, that lack of approval is beginning to sound more like an endorsement for natural alternatives.

Jill Chapin

Santa Monica

*

The recent Vioxx debacle just confirms what anyone with serious health issues has known for a long time: The FDA is a sick joke. Millions have died because the FDA prevents Americans from taking unapproved medications that are widely used in other parts of the world. And as we are now seeing, others die because the FDA rushes to approve dangerous drugs that have managed to curry favor.

Why not let doctors and patients -- those whose lives are actually affected -- decide what medications are safe and appropriate? Does a cancer patient really need an FDA bureaucrat deciding what level of risk she should be taking in treating her illness? The time has come to dismantle the FDA. The little good it does could more effectively be achieved by a private consumer protection organization.

Stewart Margolis

Los Angeles

*

Over the last several decades, governmental institutions created to protect the American people have become the servants of the industries they are supposed to oversee. This has to stop. It’s no secret that the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA have pretty much the same relationship as Capitol Hill and the private sector. The same revolving door for politicians and officials exists for FDA employees, as many move on to careers in Big Pharma after leaving government.

Today, drugs seem only to treat symptoms, rarely affecting a cure: We get better but we never get well. And the treatment is sometimes more debilitating than the disease it treats, or, as with Vioxx, even fatal. The FDA along with the American Medical Assn. and the National Institutes of Health need to start fulfilling their charters as guardians of the national health and well-being.

Roger Linnett

Venice