Prescription Drugs

Proton pump inhibitors, medications that suppress acid in the stomach, appear to be associated with fractures in postmenopausal women and bacterial infections in many patients, and higher doses do not appear any more beneficial for treating bleeding ulcers...

In a narrow decision that hands the pharmaceutical industry a significant victory, the US Supreme Court ruled that state lawsuits claiming drugmakers failed to adequately design...

New research helps to explain why some commonly used drugs come with a serious downside: They up your odds of breaking a bone. The drugs in question, glucocorticoids (e.g. cortisone and prednisone) and the insulin sensitizer rosiglitazone work through entirely different mechanisms as therapies for inflammatory diseases and diabetes respectively...

Are megabucks of drug company advertising buying major media silence about shoddy practices? You’ll never guess the name of the company we are about to describe. This year alone it has issued nine product recalls, over 130 million of their products are off the shelves, thirty children have died from taking its medications, its CEO has been the subject of Congressional hearings and investigations, its quality problems are called “systemic” by federal investigators, and a number its foreign executives are being investigated or are in prison for bribery charges.

The 5-4 ruling shields manufacturers from liability for the low-cost versions of brand-name prescription medicines. The nation's most widely used medications, generic drugs, now carry...

Consumer Reports Health just published an exposé of twelve “dangerous supplements.” It’s an example of such skewed information and biased reporting from a once respected organization that we have issued a new Action Alert.

Patients who take a triple combination of blood pressure drugs and common painkillers are at an increased risk of serious kidney problems, especially at the start of treatment, finds a new study published on the British Medical Journal website.

In contrasting China and America, pundits often cite our free and independent media as one of our greatest strengths, together with the tremendous importance which our society places upon individual American lives. For us, a single wrongful death can sometimes provoke weeks of massive media coverage and galvanize the nation into corrective action, while life remains cheap in China, a far poorer land of over a billion people, ruled by a ruthless Communist Party eager to bury its mistakes. But an examination of two of the greatest public-health scandals of the last few years casts serious doubt on this widespread belief.

A University of Adelaide forensic pathologist has sounded a worldwide warning of the potential lethal dangers of herbal medicines if taken in large quantities, injected, or combined with prescription drugs. "There's a false perception that herbal remedies are safer than manufactured medicines, when in fact many contain potentially lethal concentrations of arsenic, mercury and lead," Professor Byard says.

The pharmaceutical industry is a "market for lemons," a market in which the seller knows much more than the buyer about the product and can profit from selling products less effective and less safe than consumers are led to believe, according to an analysis that will be presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Recalls of prescription and over-the-counter drugs are surging, raising questions about the quality of drug manufacturing in the United States, according to CNN. The Food and Drug Administration reported more than 1,742 recalls last year, skyrocketing from 426 in 2008, according to the Gold Sheet, a trade publication on drug quality that analyzes FDA data.

Researchers studying the commonly used pain reliever acetaminophen found it has a previously unknown side effect: It blunts positive emotions. In the study, participants...