Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18698

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Jack A
Pharmaceuticals: Perils for pill pushers
The Finanical Times 2010 Sep 21
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/5cc9d62e-c5b5-11df-ab48-00144feab49a,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5cc9d62e-c5b5-11df-ab48-00144feab49a.html&_i_referer=

Full text:

When the US Food and Drug Administration presented an award last week to honour the 96-year-old Frances Kelsey, a former employee who helped save America from thalidomide, the mood in the agency’s corridors was not purely one of celebration.

Back in the 1960s, her actions blocked US approval of the morning sickness pill that caused thousands of children in Europe to be born with birth defects. Yet 50 years later, in the agency in Washington and at its counterpart in London, the European Medicines Agency, officials still fret over such life-and-death decisions.