Now that everyone has gotten over the initial news of the Vioxx recall, some of the more interesting analysis emerges.
The San Francisco Chronicle details how understaffed the FDA is:
Miceli said the FDA is woefully understaffed. And its guidelines often lead it to look only at the evidence presented by drug manufacturers, he said — not at the further data that could have been generated.
Forbes goes behind the scenes behind Vioxx’s fall and also writes about how the story is bad for all drugmakers. The latter piece also gives some absolute data in the study:
In the trial that was halted, 15 out of 1,000 patients taking Vioxx had heart attacks at three years–compared with 7.5 out of 1,000 for those taking only a sugar pill.
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