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Quotes about Rezulin from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"One particularly troubling aspect of Rezulin's seemingly privileged treatment was provided by David Willman's series in the Los Angeles Times: Dr. Eastman, while in charge of diabetes research at the NIH and overseeing the $150 million study in which rezulin was included, was receiving $78,455 from Warner-Lambert on top of his $144,000 annual salary from the NIH. Between 1991 and 1997, Dr. Eastman had received, according to the Los Angeles Times, "at least $260,000 in consulting-related fees from a variety of outside sources, including six drug manufacturers." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "The Los Angeles Times reported that, all told, rezulin was suspected in 391 deaths and linked to 400 cases of liver failure. Looking back on his experience, Dr. Gueriguian told the Los Angeles Times, "Either you play games or you're going to be put off limits ... a pariah." Another FDA medical officer and former supporter of rezulin, Dr. Robert I. Misbin, was threatened with dismissal by the FDA. His offense?" - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "The blood sugar-lowering diabetes drug rezulin is one of the drugs that were approved in haste by the FDA-—and later withdrawn, but much too late for many Americans. The details of the story were first presented in 2000 in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of investigative reports by David Willman of the Los Angeles Times. Remarkably, as quickly as medical news travels, this story had no "legs" and went largely unheeded. Three years later David Willman wrote a similar story showing that the same problems were still there. Dr." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"The letter said the company was soon introducing a new medicine called rezulin to help people with diabetes, a problem Jerry just happened to be struggling with. He remembers thinking, "Well, maybe this will help." Jerry ran a forklift at the big meatpacking plant in his hometown of Ottumwa, Iowa. His wages were enough to support his wife, Sadie, and their four sons and still pay for things like an annual trout fishing trip to Colorado. A burly guy, he had also worked construction and built roads, bridges, or, in his words, "just about anything." But that year he had not felt well." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) "Jerry said months after he left the hospital he heard a report that rezulin had been pulled from the market because of its propensity to ravage the liver. That's when he finally understood what had happened to him. "I was sitting on the couch, watching the World News" he said. "I said, 'Hell, that's the pill I took.'" Jerry still doesn't understand how the marketers at Parke-Davis obtained his name and address, which allowed them to send him that promotional letter back in 1996. He doesn't know how the drug executives knew he had diabetes." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) "Years after getting a new liver, Jerry and scores of other patients who were harmed by rezulin, as well as the families of those who died after taking it, received financial settlements from Pfizer. But the money won't bring back Jerry's old life. He says he tires easily and can no longer hunt pheasants and deer as he used to. It seems he is always at the doctor's office. He has arthritis, he said, and "holes in my spine" because of the prednisone, a steroid drug, he had to take for five years as part of his liver transplant." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.)

"Eastman was a paid "faculty" member of Warner Lambert's "Rezulin National Speakers Bureau," an MD group that encourages practicing physicians to use their drugs. Rezulin was the drug eventually removed from the marketplace because a number of deaths from liver disease were linked to it. An MD, a St. Louis endocrinologist, said the drug firm deliberately omitted reports of liver toxicity and misrepresented serious adverse events experienced by patients in their studies.15 What kind of doctor would let these results slide without bringing the flaws to the attention of authorities." - Brent Hoadley, Ph.D., Too Profitable to Cure (Get the book.)

"Another glitazone, called rezulin, has been taken off the market because of lethal side effects related to liver damage. There is always concern that whenever there is a major side effect with one drug in a class, other drugs of the same type will have the same side effect. Therefore there is concern that other glitazone drugs have the potential to cause fatal liver damage, although so far the glitazone drugs still on the market have not been associated with an increased risk. Concerns about the glitazones include the possibility of an increased risk of heart disease and increased weight gain." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"Between 1975 and 2005 at least twenty prescription drugs, including big sellers like rezulin, for diabetes, and the diet pill Redux, were removed from the market. In 2002 a group of researchers studied the deaths and serious injuries caused by the newest medicines. They found that of the hundreds of drugs approved between 1975 and 1999, more than 10 percent were either taken off the market or given the government's most serious warning, one that is outlined in a boldfaced black box on the label and meant to send an alarm to doctors that the product can kill." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.)

"Eastman, while in charge of diabetes research at the NIH and overseeing the $150 million study in which rezulin was included, was receiving $78,455 from Warner-Lambert on top of his $144,000 annual salary from the NIH. Between 1991 and 1997, Dr. Eastman had received, according to the Los Angeles Times, "at least $260,000 in consulting-related fees from a variety of outside sources, including six drug manufacturers." None of this was part of the public record, but the financial relationship with Warner-Lambert had been approved by two of Dr. Eastman's superiors. And Dr." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"The past decade has seen a litany of products that have fallen from grace—Vioxx, Avandia, rezulin, Seldane, Baycol, CETP inhibitors, Pre-marin, and more. Which drugs that millions consume today will be the fallen heroes of tomorrow? I am certainly not against medications or their intelligent use. But they should be used carefully, with full awareness of all their effects whether that's "drug action" or "side effects." Most medication is prescribed for conditions that are better treated by diet, nutritional therapies, and lifestyle changes." - Mark Hyman MD, The UltraMind Solution: Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First (Get the book.)

"He feared Graham's views concerning the lack of safety of Bextra, SSRI antidepressants, Lotronex, and rezulin would invite a general congressional inquiry into FDA's new drug approval process, revealing for the first time details long kept from public view through a combination of intimidation and character assassination. When efforts by Graham's supervisors at intimidating him into not testifying before the Senate Finance Committee proved unsuccessful, new efforts were undertaken to disparage him with Senator Grassley's office and with others." - Jonathan W. Emord, The Rise of Tyranny (Get the book.) "Thus, Vioxx entered the market and killed some 55,000 Americans (comparable to the number that were killed in the Vietnam war); Ketek, Serevent, rezulin, Redux, and a dozen others have entered the market causing scores to die and many more to suffer serious debilitating injuries. Nothing in the law stands in the way of repeat occurrences. We may thus expect into the foreseeable future that FDA will continue to approve for marketing drugs that the evidence indicates will impose risks that vastly exceed any provable benefit. As FDA Associate Director of the Office of Drug Safety Dr. David J." - Jonathan W. Emord, The Rise of Tyranny (Get the book.) "In his Pul-litzer prize winning expose on FDA approval of unsafe drugs, Los Angeles Times reporter David Willman recorded the following observation from one of the scientists on the FDA advisory committee that approved rezulin, Dr. Jules Hirsch, physician-in-chief emeritus at Rockefeller University in New York: "I'm really very concerned about the continued use of it.... I would not use it myself." - Jonathan W. Emord, The Rise of Tyranny (Get the book.) "Lumpkin, then Director of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, ordered the removal of Gueriguian from the rezulin review, a removal that was effectuated formally on November 4, 1996. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, Gueriguian's actual review of the drug was "purged . . . from agency files" before the drug was given "fast track" approval on January 29, 1997 by FDA management over staff objections.83 In addition, Gueriguian's negative review was kept from the agency's drug advisory committee. The agency's political manager with oversight over Gueriguian, Dr. G." - Jonathan W. Emord, The Rise of Tyranny (Get the book.)

"Here was his proposal: If he could raise the sales of these drugs to 15 percent of their respective markets, he said, would Warner-Lambert guarantee that he, as head of Parke-Davis, could use those profits to promote Lipitor and rezulin when they were approved? A deal was struck. Even before he landed in the United States, Wild was hammering away at creating a new Parke-Davis culture. The first problem was the gloom and doom, he said. That inhibited creativity. "The low-risk approach can end up as the high-risk approach," he explained in a later interview. " - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.)

"Rigged with officials who maintained financial ties to Warner-Lambert, the panel voted 11 to 1 in favor of keeping rezulin on the market. Meanwhile, Lumpkin engaged in diversionary tactics, secret meetings with Warner-Lambert executives, and other stonewalling tactics. When one FDA scientist, frustrated by the lack of action by Lumpkin, went to Congress with FDA emails and scientific findings, he was targeted in a complaint from Warner-Lambert and placed under an internal affairs investigation for leaking non-public information." - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.)

"Cohen, in his book6, went on to explain that any responsible scientist could have seen that liver problems related to rezulin were just disasters waiting to happen. Should we believe, as stated in Death by Medicine, that the number one cause of death is not disease but the health care system? Perhaps we should go one step further and look for criminal intent and criminal wrongdoing in the pharmaceuticals' pursuit of profit. The criminal landscape includes a wide range of victims and potential victims. Doctors and the government now classify obesity as a disease." - Brent Hoadley, Ph.D., Too Profitable to Cure (Get the book.) "The companies that brought you rezulin, Prozac, Vioxx, Celebrex, and hundreds of other poisons approved by the FDA are entrusted with the purity, molecular identity and quantitative guarantees of the product contained in each vial of insulin. Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, "every good democracy must have a citizenry that is willing to stage a revolution periodically in order to rid itself of those looking to abridge the rights of a free society." Are you too sick to stand up for your rights?" - Brent Hoadley, Ph.D., Too Profitable to Cure (Get the book.)

"Following close on the heels of the fen-phen fiasco was the diabetes drug rezulin, which is implicated in an incredible 391 deaths due to liver damage. The number of others who have developed nonfatal cirrhosis because of rezulin has not been tallied, but our guess is that it's a significant number. Before rezulin was finally banned in 2000, the FDA finally got around to telling U.S. doctors to monitor patients' liver function while they were using the drug. There's more." - Earl L. Mindell, RPh, PhD with Virginia Hopkins, MA, Bottom Line's Prescription Alternatives (Get the book.)

"When rezulin, one of 11 drugs available to treat diabetes, caused 33 deaths due to liver failure, Britain, but not the US, had the good sense to ban it. All ADHD drugs now in use in the US have serious side effects not appropriately addressed by the FDA. Cylert (pemoline), found to cause liver failure and death was banned in Canada, but not the US. Strattera, a non-stimulant addition to the ADHD armamentarium was touted as non-addictive and safe until it was discovered in recent months, after being marketed, to cause liver toxicity." - Fred A. Baughman, Jr., M.D. and Craig Hovey, The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes "Patients" of Normal Children (Get the book.)

"The FDA does a tremendous job on many levels, but Baycol, rezulin, Ephedra, Lotronex, Propulsid and a host of other approved but later recalled drugs make it clear that adverse events may not show up for months or even many years after FDA approval is received. In view of such experiences, it is hard to believe that the FDA approved all the SSRI antidepressants with no more than 8 weeks of clinical trial data." - Dr. Timothy Scott, America Fooled: The Truth About Antidepressants, Antipsychotics and How We've Been Deceived (Get the book.)

"As with rezulin, the process, instigated to help both shareholders and patients, became a vehicle of harm for both. Redux's approval was speeded by FDA staffers who had direct connections to American Home. Justification for its approval was based on the popularization of the real consequences of unchecked obesity, but that premise also served to obfuscate the drug's substantial lack of efficacy and to gloss over safety issues. Its approval was speeded, too, by pressure to improve FDA review times by Congress and the industry, which held a gun to the agency's head through PDUFA fees." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.) "COX-2 inhibitors (Celebrex, still on the post-Vioxx market) and statins (among them Lipitor and Zocor) are two of the biggest-selling classes of chronic disease drugs, and liver testing is recommended for both; they are nowhere near as toxic as rezulin, but they will need to be scrutinized ever more intensely if they are to remain controllable. Both are the subject of enormous scientific and marketing campaigns to expand the percentage of Americans who take them. Hence, the liver remains on the front line." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.) "It is Graham who is credited with the adverse-event reporting and tough-minded analysis that led to the withdrawal of rezulin. His methods are now studied by a new generation of drug safety students in universities around the country. Yet Graham, still at the FDA, has found the going rough when it comes to using the methods of that success in reassessing drugs that have already been approved. One such drug is Arava, or leflunomide, made by Aventis for rheumatoid arthritis and approved in 1998." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.)

"Other examples include rezulin, Propulsid, Seldane, Hismanal and Posicor. Second, tardive dyskinesia is unique. The very name means that symptoms are not supposed to show up until long after the damage begins. ("Tardive" is related to the word "tardy") Third, the law requires that drug companies conduct what are known as Phase 4 studies after their drugs come to market. These studies are required because the Phase 1 and Phase 2 studies required for receiving FDA approval are very short studies (4 to 8 weeks generally) and use very small numbers of people (20 to 80 individuals are typical)." - Dr. Timothy Scott, America Fooled: The Truth About Antidepressants, Antipsychotics and How We've Been Deceived (Get the book.)

"It turns out the FDA has not done its job in determining the safety of these drugs, as we have seen with Vioxx, rezulin and many other prescription drugs that have been pulled from the market. The drug companies say they should not be held financially responsible because the drugs have been FDA approved. In fact, there is an effort underway right now to immunize pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits involving any drugs that have been approved by the FDA. In this way, the implied statement is that the FDA's approval itself alters reality and makes these drugs safe." - Mike Adams, Spam Filters for Your Brain (Get the book.)

"One of them, rezulin, was designed to stimulate the uptake of glucose from the bloodstream by the peripheral cells and inhibit the normal secretion of glucose by the liver. After the drug killed well over 100 diabetic patients and crippled many more, it was pulled off the market. Neither the oral hypoglycemic agents nor insulin injections have any effects on increasing the uptake of glucose by the cells of the body. This essentially means that the diabetic patient cannot expect to improve or become cured by any of these treatments." - Andreas Moritz, Timeless Secrets of Health & Rejuvenation: Unleash The Natural Healing Power That Lies Dormant Within You (Get the book.)

"For example, with the above issue regarding rezulin, suppose only 10% of university funding for diabetes research did come from Warner Lambert. Ten percent seems an inconsequential amount; but consider that monies from the NIH — public, taxpayer monies — supporting the same research, was tainted by the influence corporations exert on government agencies. How unbiased will the research results actually be? Lines separating government and academia from corporate influence have become so smudged that virtually all research results become suspect." - Brent Hoadley, Ph.D., Too Profitable to Cure (Get the book.)

"Think Vioxx, Seldane, Thimerosal, Baycol, Fen Phen, Propulsid, rezulin, and PPA (phenylpropanolamine). PPA, remarkably, is still available in over-the-counter diet and cold medications. Buyer beware. Pop Quiz Most of us aren't good with statistics, and both sides of any debate can make statistics mean what they want. But in our case, there is a specific mathematical equation that can be used to illustrate the dangers of drug interactions and their potential side effects." - David H. Rippe, Jared Rosen, The Flip: Turn Your World Around (Get the book.)

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