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Articles on Drug safety

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Horseshoe crabs in spawning season at Reeds Beach, N.J., on June 13, 2023. AP Photo/Matt Rourke

Horseshoe crab blood is vital for testing intravenous drugs, but new synthetic alternatives could mean pharma won’t bleed this unique species dry

Horseshoe crabs play a unique role in medicine, but they’re also ecologically important in their home waters along the Atlantic coast. Can regulators balance the needs of humans and nature?
When regulatory agencies like Health Canada approve a new drug, they require the drug company to continue monitoring the product’s safety. (Shutterstock)

Health Canada should be transparent about how it’s monitoring drug safety

Health Canada continues to monitor newly approved drugs to determine if the benefits identified in the pre-market trials hold up to further scrutiny. Canadians need better access to that information.
In addition to evaluating new drug applications, the FDA also inspects drug manufacturing facilities. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration/Flickr

Challenging the FDA’s authority isn’t new – the agency’s history shows what’s at stake when drug regulation is in limbo

As the government’s oldest consumer protection agency, the FDA has long butted up against drugmakers, activists and politicians. But undermining its work could be harmful to patient health and safety.
Herbal remedies are commonplace in Uganda; testing these scientifically is a good way to ensure they’re safe and effective. Ava Peattie/Shutterstock

Herbal skin treatments in Uganda get an important scientific boost

It is important that herbal medicine be checked for its safety, its potential to treat particular ailments, and to ascertain its chemical components.
Though drug recalls are relatively uncommon in the U.S., reduced inspections increase the likelihood of manufacturing errors that slip through the cracks. AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool

The FDA’s weak drug manufacturing oversight is a potentially deadly problem

COVID-19 has exacerbated a backlog of domestic and foreign drug manufacturing inspections that the FDA is still too short-staffed to adequately deal with.
Pharmaceutical companies recalled metformin, a Type 2 diabetes drug, after finding high levels of NDMA impurities. Scott Olson via Getty Images

Zantac unlikely to turn into cancer-causing chemical in the body, but concerns remain about how drugs age on the shelf

The FDA recalled commonly used heartburn and ulcer medication ranitidine in April 2020. But new research suggests less reason for alarm.
Despite monitoring the same drugs, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States issued the same drug warnings only seven per cent of the time over a 10-year period. (Pixabay)

Drug Safety: Health Canada must act faster when approved medications show risks

Health Canada devotes far more resources to getting new drugs onto the market compared to making sure that drugs already being sold are safe.
A lab technician holds a vial of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate during testing at the Chula Vaccine Research Center, run by Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand on May 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

Explainer: How clinical trials test COVID-19 vaccines

Will a vaccine for COVID-19 be safe? Animal testing, human clinical trials and post-approval surveillance give us good grounds to believe that a future approved vaccine will work and be safe.
Vlachaslau Govorkov/Shutterstock.com

How to talk to your teenagers about drugs

The idea that we can sit down calmly and rationally and explain to our children how they can take drugs safely overlooks a bundle of emotional issues.
Human challenge studies can be useful to test new vaccines and are increasingly being used internationally. Yet there are several ethical issues to consider. from www.shutterstock.com

Infecting healthy people in vaccine research can be ethical and necessary

Deliberately infecting people with a disease-causing agent as part of carefully considered medical research can be ethically acceptable or even necessary.
An animal experiment in a laboratory of the pharmaceutical company “Chemie Gruenenthal,” which manufactured the drug Thalidomide, in West Germany in 1969. Thalidomide was prescribed by doctors as a mild sleeping pill and for relief of morning sickness but caused the miscarriage and birth of thousands of children with severe malformations globally. (AP Photo/File)

We need answers to the thalidomide tragedy – to ensure drug safety today

A new book, ‘The Thalidomide Catastrophe,’ raises new questions about the conduct of corporations involved. It is the duty of governments to find out the answers.
Health Canada’s intention to increase the fees drug makers pay for the drug approval process threatens to compromise drug safety and the health of the Canadian public. (Shutterstock)

Your prescription drugs are about to become less safe if Health Canada has its way

Health Canada proposes to increase fees to the pharmaceutical industry for prescription drug approval. This will compromise drug safety and is a risk to the health of the Canadian public.

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