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Supporters vow to keep fighting for measure this year

SACRAMENTO—Doctors, patients, consumer groups and health care advocates were dealt a setback by the state Senate this week when it failed to advance the Pharmaceutical Drug Right-to-Know Act. The legislation, SB 1683 by Senator Jack Scott (Altadena), would have required pharmaceutical companies to disclose the results of all their health studies, good and bad. It was introduced in response to the VIOXX tragedy, which was worsened by drug giant Merck's cover-up of its own negative health studies, and other drug safety tragedies like it.

“More than 50,000 Americans died from heart attacks or strokes caused by taking the pain killer VIOXX, and this legislation would have prevented or certainly limited such tragedies in the future,” said Emily Clayton, health care advocate with CALPIRG, the sponsor of the legislation. “It was the most important consumer protection bill in California this year.”

Like other measures, the bill was held in the Senate Appropriations committee and never made it to the Senate floor for a full vote. Despite minimal state costs included in the legislation and later amendments clarifying that the bill wouldn't impose any state costs at all, the measure sat stalled.

“The lobbying of the pharmaceutical industry certainly played a leading role in the bill's failure,” said Clayton.

While legislative deadlines will prevent this specific bill from moving forward, supporters of the legislation are considering other avenues to keep the issue alive.

“We understand that the pharmaceutical industry would rather not come clean by making public their health studies, but sunshine is the best disinfectant,” Clayton added. “We're grateful for Senator Scott's commitment to this issue and will keep working to give legislators another opportunity to do the right thing by passing a drug safety bill this year.”

In addition to CALPIRG, the measure was also supported by the California Labor Federation/AFL-CIO, California Nurses Association, AARP California, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Consumers Union, Health Access, Older Women's League, Gray Panthers, Greenlining Institute, Senior Action Network, Congress of California Seniors, California Alliance for Retired Americans and the OURx Bill of Rights Coalition.

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CALPIRG is a statewide non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Drugs, Lab Medicine, Men’s Health, Nurses, Pharmacists, Women’s Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.