Drug Safety: Balance and Discretion Needed

Most of us have had a bad reaction to a medication or at least an unexpected side effect. You may even know someone who died from a reaction to a drug. At least one report* claims the number of people killed from a drug reaction at more than 100,000 a year. And of course we are all familiar with drugs like Vioxx which were pulled off the market. The July issue of Discover magazine has an article by Jeanne Lenzer titled “Medicine’s Magic Bullets?”. In it she discusses the issues of harm caused