FDA's Graham Pleads for Common Sense

David Graham, the Food and Drug Administration safety officer who blew the whistle on Vioxx, has concise and damning review of the clinical trial history for the Cox-2 inhibitor class of painrelievers in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association. If the lessons of recent history are learned, he concludes, "the FDA's concerns will now be squarely focused on patient safety rather than corporate profitability, and, ultimately, common sense will prevail." You got to love the optimism.