Physician urges FDA not to lift restrictions on drug makers’ claims about their products

Drug regulations and a governing body to mandate them is a necessity for patients’ safety and health care providers’ peace-of-mind, according to a recently released commentary in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “As a prescriber, I have been willing to give up my freedom to prescribe any chemical I choose to patients, and I am willing to have drug manufacturers give up some of their right to tell me whatever they may want me to hear. For all of us (including patients) to hand over some liberties to a Hobbesian Sovereign, such as the FDA, offers a different kind of freedom — knowing that the medications we use are probably, at least as a first approximation, reasonably safe and have some evidence that they work,” Jerry Avorn, MD, Harvard School of Medicine, wrote in his paper.