Are safety warnings secret drug company business?
Post-market drug safety warnings issued to doctors should be available online for patients too, say researchers
If a doctor receives a safety warning about emerging evidence of harm associated with a medication, does a patient on that drug have a right to know?
In the modern era of fully informed consent, many would assume the answer is ‘yes’, as a matter of course.
But in Australia — unlike Canada, the US and the UK — safety warnings issued to doctors are not necessarily on the public record.
A group of Australian researchers is making a strong case that they ought to be and have called for a searchable, online database of all post-market safety warnings on medicines.
