Posted by Racer on May 19, 2004, at 20:03:24
In reply to Serzone to be discontinued - Yahoo news headline, posted by SLS on May 19, 2004, at 17:47:38
Within a couple of weeks of starting Serzone some years ago, I was hospitalized with some sort of liver thing. It took about a year to get anything like my previous strength back, although that's likely because the doctor continued me on the wretched stuff until I was too sick to keep anything down at all and was literally crawling to the bathroom. Now I worry that it may have caused damage to my liver.
That's only a small part of my reaction to this news, though. A much bigger issue, in my mind, is that it's taken so long for anything like this to happen here. Profits are more important than maybe doing further studies to find out how dangerous it really is? If maybe the liver problems could be predicted in advance? Maybe even ban the drug if it couldn't be proven safe? Maybe take the safety of consumers a little more seriously than the profit margin involved?
Now, I haven't worked in capital B business for a number of years, but I still have the inner accountant inside me. That inner accountant says that it's actually good PR to say, "Wow! We didn't know, but now that there's a strong suspicion, we're going to withdraw this drug voluntarily until its safety to consumers can be proven to our satisfaction." And you know what? I bet it wouldn't even drop the stock prices.
(Yeah, OK, I'm not a BusinessPerson anymore. But I still think that safety is more important than this week's stock price. That's gonna change next week, anyway, right?)
Again, I'm very sorry for anyone who will be affected negatively by this. But I still say, "GOOD! What took them so dang long?"
poster:Racer
thread:348682
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040515/msgs/348711.html