On BBC1 now.
Extraordinary how people adapt to disability. Rolling a ciggy with your feet, anyone?
The reason I am posting is to note how things have changed when drugs are developed, for anyone interested (off topic, but what isn't, on here?). Back in the 50s there were no real regulations over safety in the UK. The US had rules originating from contamination of tuna by mercury, which resulted in deaths. That caused the formation of the FDA (F = food and D = drugs). They never had thalidomide becuase their rules said 'prove the new drug is better than current' rather that 'as good as' (the UK rule at the time). Plus they were slow to approve anything foreign (oops - accidentally tickled the G spot of one or two usual suspects with that, I bet
)
In the UK and the rest of the world, things got serious when terfenadine, an over the counter antihistamine, was found (after millions of prescriptions) to cause an increadibly rare (50 possible cases) of cardiac arrhythmia in the 1990s.
The newly formed Safety Pharmacology Society, and the regulatory authorites changed everything, and now all drugs are put through masses of safety tests on animals before FIH (first in human) studies. The result is that drugs now rarely fail due to safety, and instead fail mostly due to lack of effectiveness.,
Anyway, despite percerptions, we are living in a better world. No guarantees, but better is better than worse.
Cheers.
Extraordinary how people adapt to disability. Rolling a ciggy with your feet, anyone?
The reason I am posting is to note how things have changed when drugs are developed, for anyone interested (off topic, but what isn't, on here?). Back in the 50s there were no real regulations over safety in the UK. The US had rules originating from contamination of tuna by mercury, which resulted in deaths. That caused the formation of the FDA (F = food and D = drugs). They never had thalidomide becuase their rules said 'prove the new drug is better than current' rather that 'as good as' (the UK rule at the time). Plus they were slow to approve anything foreign (oops - accidentally tickled the G spot of one or two usual suspects with that, I bet
)In the UK and the rest of the world, things got serious when terfenadine, an over the counter antihistamine, was found (after millions of prescriptions) to cause an increadibly rare (50 possible cases) of cardiac arrhythmia in the 1990s.
The newly formed Safety Pharmacology Society, and the regulatory authorites changed everything, and now all drugs are put through masses of safety tests on animals before FIH (first in human) studies. The result is that drugs now rarely fail due to safety, and instead fail mostly due to lack of effectiveness.,
Anyway, despite percerptions, we are living in a better world. No guarantees, but better is better than worse.
Cheers.
