Ideally, the kind of information consumers want would be readily available in user-friendly form from the US Food and Drug Administration. But the FDA has been having major problems keeping on top of emerging problems with drugs it already has approved.
In November, the FDA itself asked the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, to try to figure out what is wrong with its system.
Last week, the editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association called for a new, independent drug safety board to oversee such surveillance, noting that it is “unreasonable” to expect the same agency that approves drugs to seek evidence “to prove itself wrong.”
On top of these problems, the FDA’s website can be so cumbersome to use that it’s difficult to sort out even the information that is there.
Imagine, for instance, that you want information on Ambien, the popular sleeping pill. If you go to the FDA website, at www.fda.gov, and search for “Ambien,” you end up drowning in everything from correspondence between the FDA and the drug manufacturer to highly detailed biochemistry that only a neuroscientist could love.
There are a few other places to turn, said Dr. Jerry Avorn of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who recently wrote a book about prescription drugs called “Powerful Medicines.” about prescription drugs. One is www.PDRHealth.com, which gives consumer-friendly information based on the Physicians’ Desk Reference, the doctors’ bible of drug information. Another user-friendly site, www.safemedication.com, is provided by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
You can also “Google” a drug like Ambien, though the information you get is not vetted by any medical authority, which means company propaganda and consumer complaints are all mixed in together.
Additional sites should be available soon. On Dec. 9, Consumer Reports will launch a free new website, www.crbestbuydrugs.org, that will allow consumers to check on drugs by category, such as medications to control cholesterol. This program, said project manager Gail Shearer, will start with three drug categories and expand up to 20, and will provide information on effectiveness as well as cost.