FDA OK of Rezulin

* As a practicing physician, I appreciate your March 11 story, “Risk Was Known as FDA OKd Fatal Drug.” When the diabetes drug Rezulin was still on the market, I was pushing for its withdrawal, or at least a “black box” warning to physicians.

Since its inception in the early 1900s, the congressional mandate to the Food and Drug Administration has been to protect the public. In the 1990s, when Congress asked the FDA to speed approval for drugs that could potentially save lives in hopeless diseases such as AIDS and terminal cancer (fast-track approval), I did not expect non-lifesaving drugs to also be included.

The pharmaceutical industry has the responsibility to report to the FDA adverse reactions discovered about its drugs. The need to make maximum profits must not override the need to protect patient safety. I expect our FDA to put patient safety as its top priority, and I rely on it to assure that I’m warned about adverse reactions and risk factors in the medicines that I prescribe to my patients. We must have it no other way.

MELVIN H. KIRSCHNER MD

Van Nuys

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Could someone please explain to me again how our system of justice works? It seems to me Dr. Randall Whitcomb [Warner-Lambert vice president for diabetes research] and friends are responsible for more deaths than any serial killer.

PAULA MAXWELL

Los Angeles