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Ask President Bush to sign the drug safety bill

The Bush administration is indebted to the powerful drug industry.  Tell the president to put the interests of consumers and patients first and sign the drug safety bill passed by Congress this week.

Overview

Pharmaceutical companies make important life-saving medicines. But that shouldn't give them license to drive up drug prices, ignore the risks of harmful side effects, or block needed reforms in California and in Congress. Consider:

• Pharmaceutical companies use direct-to-consumer ads to sell their latest, most expensive drugs. The industry claims that these ads help to educate consumers. But that doesn’t compute with the fact that a CALPIRG analysis of FDA records for the years 2001-2005 found that the ads for 150 different drugs were false or misleading.

• Merck, the manufacturer of Vioxx, continued to market its painkiller to doctors and patients years after the company had substantial evidence of increased the risk of heart problems. FDA researchers estimate that, in less than 5 years, Vioxx may have caused as many as 139,000 heart attacks and strokes.

• When Congress created the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the pharmaceutical industry and its lobbyists inserted a provision that prohibits the program from negotiating bulk-rate discounts for drugs.

CALPIRG is working to require drug companies to fully disclose studies and information about the safety and effectiveness of their drugs, to enable the FDA to better crack down on pharmaceutical companies that fail to conduct safety tests or mislead doctors and the public through their advertisements, and to allow Congress to negotiate drug discounts for the Medicare program.