Your Opportunity to Affect Drug Ads on TV, in Magazines

In my opinion, the best way to get beyond a horrible experience is to make sure it doesn't happen to someone else. It's the reason I empower other patients. And it's the reason my friend, Kim Witczak helps others, too.

Kim's husband, Woody, was a vibrant, intelligent, well-respected and charismatic young man with a new job and everything to live for. When the stress of starting his new job got in the way of a good night's sleep, he consulted his physician, and was given a prescription for Zoloft. Five weeks later, Woody committed suicide.

It took awhile for Kim and those who helped her to figure out why Woody would have taken his own life. The connection to Zoloft was made after a great deal of investigation. And as Kim looked into it further, she learned that Pfizer, the manufacturer, had actually covered up studies of Zoloft showing a connection to suicides when it applied for Zoloft's approval through the FDA.

Kim then put all her efforts into making sure a new law was passed to require pharm manufacturers to reveal ALL study results as a part of their application for drug approval. It was passed into federal law in September 2007, to take effect 18 months later.

Next up? Taking on the ads you see for pharmaceutical drugs in the media -- TV, radio, magazines -- you see them everywhere!

They aren't going away -- they work too well. But Kim and her colleagues decided that there should be a better way for patients/consumers to report problems with those drugs -- just like she might have been able to report problems with Zoloft. Congress is now considering a requirement that all pharm drug ads aimed directly at us patients/consumers should bear a toll-free phone number and a web address to make it very easy to report adverse events (bad side effects, whether or not they are listed on the information that gets packaged with the drug).

Personally -- I think this is an excellent idea. As you can imagine -- those pharm manufacturers want nothing to do with it! Think big tobacco and warnings printed on packs of cigarettes -- multiplied exponentially! And believe me, big pharma will do everything in its lobbying and palm-greasing power to make sure this doesn't happen....

.... so in steps Consumer's Union -- the folks who bring you Consumer Reports.... with a petition for all of us to sign to help this bill become a law. They plan to deliver the petition by mid-March and hope to get 50,000 signatures. And you can do your part!

If you understand that these pharmaceutical drug ads are going to continue, but you also believe that they should bear information that makes it easy for us patients to report problems with these drugs, directly to the FDA, then please consider signing this petition.

It's a way you, too, can help others when you've had a bad experience yourself.

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