Langer: Withdrawing Vioxx from the market in 2005 was wrong
Bob Langer · a16z Podcast | Mindsets for Engineering Biology · Jan 2, 2019 · at 22:46
Bob Langer, MIT professor and former FDA Science Board chairman, discusses how regulatory risk aversion intensified following the 2005 withdrawal of Vioxx.
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“The second one that I think had a negative effect was the Vioxx situation in 2005, and, you know, there was just a small increase in deaths with this drug, but there were so many lawsuits over it, That people at the FDA would get called on the carpet for approving it. A lot of clinicians I know felt to take that off the market was wrong because it really would relieve suffering and pain. That's very complicated because, like I say, the increase in deaths was very, very tiny, whereas the decrease in pain was enormous.”
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