An Investigative Reporter is Himself Investigated

Trevor Butterworth
Brian Ross’s champagne-toasted status as the “one of the preeminent enterprise journalists in TV news” gets a mild roasting from the New York Observer – or at least from rival investigative reporters, who feel Ross may be too quick off the mark in the scoop department.
Of course, the problem with creating a television [...]

Misdirected Congressional Fears Over Avandia Risk Coverup?

Trevor Butterworth
On October 18, The European Medicines Agency announced (pdf) that “having assessed all the data,” the benefits of the antidiabetic medicine Avandia (along with rival Actos) outweighed the risks. The Agency added:

“However, the prescribing information should be updated to include a warning that, in patients with ischaemic heart disease, rosiglitazone [Avandia] should only be [...]

New York Times Continues to Mislead on Avandia Risks

Trevor Butterworth
Undoubtedly New York Times reporter Gardiner Harris knows how to report; and, it is reasonable to presume that his editors – who provide the six layers of editing that every Times article must endure - recognize good reporting when they see it. The problem with Gardiner’s coverage of the various controversies surrounding the diabetes [...]

The Cost of Media Scare Stories to Diabetics

Trevor Butterworth
The current issue of Biocentury, a trade publication that covers the pharmaceutical industry, should be essential and chastening reading for the journalists, editors and politicians who helped turn a limited, problematic study on the risks of the diabetes drug rosliglitazone (brand name Avandia) into a major international health scare.
In a comprehensive report on the [...]

FDA Drug Standards: What’s Safe Enough?

Trevor Butterworth
From Wired: Why would the FDA allow a pharmaceutical company to continue to sell an apparently dangerous drug? The answer is not simple, and at a time when mistrust of the government’s relationship with the healthcare industry seems to be increasing, the subtleties can get lost in daily news reports… more
Originally published August 2, [...]

So What Did We Learn From Avandia? (Hint: The Media Are a Hazard to Public Health)

Trevor Butterworth, Huffington Post
Take several critics of the way the FDA ensures the safety of drugs, rush a flawed study into print, characterize the results as catastrophic, rope in drug regulation warriors on Capitol Hill, rant about the evils of Big Pharma, talk to a credulous, statistically-illiterate media, and voila - you have Vioxx II, [...]

Avandia Vote a Rebuke to Media Alarmism

Trevor Butterworth
A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended in a 22 to 1 to one vote that the diabetes drug Avandia remain on the market, with additional warnings about cardiac risk, but not the most extreme drug warning – a black box – in the FDA arsenal.
The recommendation, which is non-binding but almost certain [...]

New York Times Cherry Picks Data, Sources to Smear Avandia in Advance of FDA Hearing

Trevor Butterworth
The line between the New York Times editorial page, which has been highly critical of the FDA’s handling of the potential risk from the diabetes drug Avandia, and the health news pages appears to have disappeared in the Times’ coverage of the forthcoming FDA hearings on the drug… more
Originally published July 27, 2007

Heartless Regulation May End Up Killing Kids

Trevor Butterworth, Huffington Post

In recent years, the Food and Drug Administration has more often than not been damned for regulating too little rather than too much; but in a horrible twist, reported by Thomas M. Burton and Shelly Banjo in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, the very scientific principles which stand between the public and quackery [...]