Congressional Hearings On FDA Cover-Up Of The Heart Health Risks Of Avandia To Begin June 6

Filed under: In The News — @ May 23, 2007

Millions of diabetics take Avandia, but is it harming them?

We live in a society that says as long as you take your pills, you can live your life however you want to. Forget about making natural changes in your diet and lifestyle to manage your health, just go hog wild living it up and let the prescription drugs take care of the consequences of those foolish actions (like the American Diabetes Association’s recommendation to go ahead and eat your carbs as long as you take your diabetes medicines–UGH!).

But doing that sometimes opens you up to certain health risks as we discovered in a new study out this week about the widely-used and prescribed diabetes drug Avandia. Have you heard this shocking story yet?

It seems the manufacturer of this diabetes medicine–#2 bestselling prescription drug at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)–informed the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) as early as 2005 of a 30-percent increase in heart disease risk for patients taking this drug. So did the FDA do their own investigation into this to confirm the safety of Avandia? Was an effort made to inform patients of this known risk?

In a word–NOPE!

Instead, it took a study published in this week’s New England Journal Of Medicine to shine the light of truth on this horrific discovery that may have already quite literally negatively impacted the health of millions of Americans. You know what that means, don’t you? Lawsuits out the ying yang and rightfully so.

What did that study find out about the health risks of diabetics taking Avandia?

After a thorough examination of 42 different studies that have been conducted on the drug posted right there on the GlaxoSmithKline web site, the researchers concluded that there was an even higher risk of heart attack–an astounding 43 percent INCREASE–as well as a spike in the risk of death from heart disease–a stunning 64 percent INCREASE!

Yikes!

Click here to read more about this stunning revelation about the potential health dangers of Avandia that has sent shockwaves that reverberate all the way to the halls of the U.S. Congress regarding the apparent cover-up by the FDA about these risks they’ve known about for several years.