In Preventable Medical Errors, medical expert witness Perry Hookman, M.D., writes that cancer outpatient medication errors may be more common than previously thought and asks “has the pendulum swung too far?”
The Implicit Message Communicated To The Public [i.e. Medical Malpractice Potential Jurors] Is That Many Drugs On The Market Are Neither Safe Nor Effective – And That Federal Drug-Safety Regulators Are Generally Incompetent.
Notwithstanding the above a decade’s worth of unprecedented drug recalls and other worrisome developments in drug safety or efficacy have appropriately pushed many journalists into aggressive coverage of pharmaceutical issues. The downside of the drumbeat of coverage, however, is the implicit message communicated to the public that many drugs on the market are neither safe nor effective – and that federal drug-safety regulators are generally incompetent,” reports Susan Dentzer [Dentzer S. “Communicating Health Care News-Pitfalls of Healthcare Journalism.” NEJM 2009,36[1]:1]