Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Can you imagine?

going to your pharmacy and being told, sorry, you can't get the drug you've been taking for years--and the only thing that's been working for you, because they pulled it due to concerns over liver damage?

Now, I understand being concerned over potential damaging side effects of medication--virtually every drug has some unwanted effect possible. But this drug has been around for a long time--at least twenty-five years, and the number of people who do not suffer bad effects surely should outweigh the concerns. Even so, if you must pull something, shouldn't you have to phase something out gradually, and at the very least, notify patients that it won't be available? Finding out at the pharmacy (and in this case even the pharmacy didn't know until it contacted the wholesaler) isn't really acceptable.

Anyway, I'm sorry for those who got left hanging. Maybe the Narcolepsy Network and others concerned over this will be able to get out the word. For those of us who rely on medications to be productive members of society--whether it's for seizures, pain, ADD, narcolepsy, or a host of different chronic ailments--it's scary to think that our medicines that are so important in our lives could be yanked away at any moment.

Making Light: Fckng Ralph Nader, fckng Public Citizen

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