The heart-attack risks of arthritis painkillers Vioxx, Bextra and Celebrex have exposed a regulatory “house of cards” at the Food and Drug Administration, wrote Dr. Eric J. Topol, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.
“Unbridled promotion exacerbated the public health problem,” Topol concluded. “The combination of mass promotion of a medicine with an unknown and suspect safety profile cannot be tolerated in the future.” Read more here. Topol’s Journal of American Medicine article: Arthritis Medicines and Cardiovascular Events?”House of Coxibs”
Background Links: alltheweb | Clusty | Google News | MSN Search | Teoma | Yahoo Search
Drug advertising has truly gone off the deep end. Driving down the beltline and seeing a nonsensical name on a billboard makes no sense.
Daily Archives: December 30, 2004
Madison WiFi RFP: Cities Should Control Their Fate
Carol Ellison: “Opinion: Pennsylvania has given Big Broadband too much control over municipal wireless installations. Other states should not repeat the error.”
The holidays, it seems, can’t pass without a Scrooge story.
This year’s comes from the state of Pennsylvania where early this month Gov. Edward Rendell [Democrat] inked legislation that effectively left the future development of municipal wireless broadband services in that state in the hands of Big Broadband.
The bill lets incumbent carriers (in Pennsylvania, that would be Verizon) determine whether Pennsylvania cities can create? and charge for? municipal wireless access services. The new law came hot on the heels of Philadelphia’s announcement that it planned to do just that. Now, it’s up to Verizon to exercise thumbs-up or thumbs-down on Philadelphia’s wireless ambitions. The company claims it won’t scotch the city’s plan. But what happens when Pittsburgh, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton or Harrisburg decide to unwire?
Via Glenn Fleishman. I have a bit of hope that someone other than SBC will win Madison’s WiFi RFP.