Is Vitamin A Toxic?
In one word: NO!
If your doctor tells
you that Vitamin A is toxic, then they are a liar!
However, Accutane (artificial Vitamin
A) is phenomenally toxic. It causes spontaneous abortions and birth defects nearly 100% of the time.
"Isotretinoin may cause severe side effects and should be used only for severe resistant
acne. Isotretinoin must not be used in women who are pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or have a chance of being pregnant
due to a risk of severe birth defects."
Downloded
from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/patient-vitamina.html on December 18,2009
Teratogenic
= Causes birth defects.
Roche Pulls Accutane Off Market After
Jury Verdicts
By Jef Feeley and Sophia Pearson
June 26, 2009 (Bloomberg)
Roche Holding
AG, the world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs, is pulling its Accutane acne medicine from the U.S. market after juries
awarded at least $33 million in damages to users who blamed the drug for bowel disease.
Roche notified the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration today that it was withdrawing Accutane after a “reevaluation” of its product lines
showed it faced serious challenges from generic competitors, company officials said in a statement.
“In addition,
Roche has been faced with high costs from personal-injury lawsuits that the company continues to defend vigorously,”
according to the statement.
About 13 million people have taken Accutane since it went on the market in 1982. The
medication was Roche’s second-biggest selling drug before the patent expired in 2002 and rivals started selling generic
versions. Roche’s prescription market share of the drug is now below 5 percent, the company said.
The company
faces as many as 5,000 personal-injury claims over Accutane, said Michael Hook, a Pensacola, Florida-based attorney. He won
a $10.5 million verdict against the drugmaker over the medicine in April 2008. He noted that Roche has lost six cases that
have gone to trial over the drug.
“We’ve been winning the cases with the drug still on the market,
but this move certainly isn’t going to hurt us going forward,” Hook said in an interview today.
Some
Accutane users allege the drugmaker failed to properly warn them the medicine could cause inflammatory bowel disease. The
drug also has been linked to birth defects and depression.
Lawyers for John Mullarkey, a 20-year-old Monroeville,
Pennsylvania, man facing murder charges over the death of his 16-year-old cheerleader girlfriend, said he was suffering from
an Accutane-fueled depression when the killing occurred, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper reported today.
The drug also has been pulled off the market in 11 other countries including France, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Portugal,
Norway and Spain, Shelley Rosenstock, a spokeswoman for Roche’s Nutley, New Jersey-based U.S. unit said. Rosenstock
said Accutane’s safety wasn’t a factor in the decision to yank it off the U.S. market.
“Roche
stands behind the safety of Accutane and the rigorous risk-management program Roche developed over decades of cooperation
with the FDA,” she said in the statement.
In November, a state-court jury in New Jersey found company officials
didn’t properly warn doctors about Accutane’s health risks and awarded three men a total of $12.9 million in damages.
To contact the reporters on this story:
Jef Feeley in Wilmington, Delaware, at jfeeley@bloomberg.net;
Sophia
Pearson in Wilmington, Delaware, at spearson3@bloomberg.net.
Downloaded from http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a7Oj2q25ZHZ8
on December 18, 2009
