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Ban on Vicodin and Percocet Limitation on Tylenol
by nygirl7, Jul 08, 2009 08:28AM
Proposed Tylenol restrictions worry patients
FDA is considering reduced maximum dose, ban on Vicodin and Percocet
WASHINGTON - Proposed limits on Tylenol, a painkiller as common as pain itself, have left many consumers fearful, confused and wondering where to turn for relief. The potential government crackdown on acetaminophen, Tylenol's main ingredient, would affect everyone from occasional pill poppers to chronic pain sufferers who rely on daily doses to make their lives more bearable.
If adopted by the Food and Drug Administration, the changes would lower the maximum over-the-counter Tylenol dose and would ban two narcotic painkillers, Vicodin and Percocet, which also contain acetaminophen.
Yet another painkiller, propoxyphene, was the target of FDA action on Tuesday. Also sold as Darvon and in an acetaminophen combination called Darvocet, it has been linked to accidental overdoses and suicides. The prescription medication will now come with a pamphlet describing the risk.
More ....... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31782102/ns/health-more_health_news/
-----------------
I think people have been aware for YEARS that you cannot take too much Tylenol or it can hurt your liver but to liken Vicodin and Percocet to "candy mixed with poison" is just ludicrous. All meds have their place in the world and not everybody becomes addicted to them. It's up to the doctors to make sure they are not over prescribing - not take away these sort of mild pain meds to the rest of the world who can use them judiciously. That's my opinion.
FDA is considering reduced maximum dose, ban on Vicodin and Percocet
WASHINGTON - Proposed limits on Tylenol, a painkiller as common as pain itself, have left many consumers fearful, confused and wondering where to turn for relief. The potential government crackdown on acetaminophen, Tylenol's main ingredient, would affect everyone from occasional pill poppers to chronic pain sufferers who rely on daily doses to make their lives more bearable.
If adopted by the Food and Drug Administration, the changes would lower the maximum over-the-counter Tylenol dose and would ban two narcotic painkillers, Vicodin and Percocet, which also contain acetaminophen.
Yet another painkiller, propoxyphene, was the target of FDA action on Tuesday. Also sold as Darvon and in an acetaminophen combination called Darvocet, it has been linked to accidental overdoses and suicides. The prescription medication will now come with a pamphlet describing the risk.
More ....... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31782102/ns/health-more_health_news/
-----------------
I think people have been aware for YEARS that you cannot take too much Tylenol or it can hurt your liver but to liken Vicodin and Percocet to "candy mixed with poison" is just ludicrous. All meds have their place in the world and not everybody becomes addicted to them. It's up to the doctors to make sure they are not over prescribing - not take away these sort of mild pain meds to the rest of the world who can use them judiciously. That's my opinion.
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I had a biopsy for the porphyria and begged for the vicodan with the lower tylenol in it. The dermatologist never heard of it. I was scared to add tylenol to an already compromised liver.
ahhh heII just give me dialaudid (just kidding) never took it and have no desire to. I just took 2 tylenol for the swelling in my spine where it locked up a few days ago............and it ain't gettin any better.
Denise
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/2009-07-07-voa3.cfm
http://www.clinsci.org/cs/117/cs1170049.htm
"HCV infection can lead to cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, extrahepatic manifestations, and is the leading cause of liver transplantation in the United States.:
http://www.rockefeller.edu/labheads/rice/
"HCV is the leading cause of liver transplantation and causes
approximately 8,000 to 10,000 deaths each year in the United States."
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS96774+08-Jun-2009+BW20090608
"HCV infection is the leading cause of liver transplantation in the United States."
http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/index.html?ID=7198
maybe this should say tynenol is the leading cause of liver damage in the United States. and not transplants....but ill bet tynenol has a direct and indirect effect on the tansplant numbers
I remember reading just how much tylenol you have to take to get liver damage from it and it was a LOT. People should just have enough common sense not to take 20 of them at a time and to follow the medicines directions is what I think. I understand that people who take Vicodin and Percocet are often taking many of them a day - but they can easily enough take the tylenol out of the equation and just give the people the hydrocodone or whatever it is called so that they aren't ingesting 20 pills of it a day.
Responsiblity lay on the person just like with alcohol - two beers is one thing but two cases is another. This will cause liver damage. Are they going to put the alcohol commission after them to stop selling that or to limit the sale?
I doubt it.
My answer is Yes, I agree that it should have said, and perhaps it is accurate, that Tylenol is the leading cause of liver damage in the US.
And yes I agree that Tylenol use and abuse does have a direct and indirect effect on the transplant numbers.
Mike
BTW one of the 4 highlighted lectures for the ASSLD next year is a lecture on tylenol toxicity. Hmm....just cause studies are done independently and not by drug company giants doen't make them irrelevant, inconsequential or insignifigant? What a concept!
this reminds me of 2 things. 1. a loved one of mine almost died from tylenol, it is like pulling teeth to convince them that the stuff had almost killed them...folks who take lots of this, or who take it with other drugs or booze are asking for liver failure IMHO.
2. acetominophen was discovered in the 1800's...it didn't become widely used until a drug company in the 50's coined the word tylenol and began a mass market campaign.
I read about this drug in the 60's and it horrified me then, and has horrified me more with every passing year. Advil and all NSAIDS horrified as well, as it causes internal bleeding by thinning the stomach wall with regular use.
here's the bottom line: did anyone read the story of Bayer recently? Where they mislead the FDA, did not reveal their anticoagulant was killing 1000 people per months, ignored and pled ignorance after 2 docs, an independant and their own Harvard selection reviewed thousands of cases and both concluded the drug was a killer?
who read those clips? The doc discovering this was one who wondered why so the mortality rate had shot up in his hospital...and 2000 case reviews later he knew it was the drug.
and yet we expect the drug companies to be honest and tell us when things are fatal?
news flash..the FDA is NOT required to know a drugs SAFETY, ONLY IT'S EFFICACY.
so whose hip pocket does that put them in really.
when all this Bayer "ignorance" was brought to the FDA's attention they deicided to take it up again with Bayer in the following year. (they found out about the hidden research one week after bayer's hearing on the drug. Yet deided to wait a year to talk to them
effectively killing, condemning an extra 22,000 heart patients if I'm remembering correctly to death based on the usage in our nations hopital.)
read it and weep....the drug is called trasyLOL but don't LOL on this one.
mb
In Europe i.e. we buy just the paracetamol and other meds are not mixed with paracetamol. So you cannot overdose. I personally think that this would be a good policy to adopt in the US. It would definitely take care of the problem.
Ahh, but thats not normal behavior for an adult. Sit inside while someone else mows your lawn. I don't see kids anymore. Where are they? When I was a kid we couldn't walk to where we were going-we ran. Why? To get there faster. Now thats considered hyperactivity-give em a pill. Slow them down, and if they get excited and talk too much give em a pill they are obviously ADD. Sorry this really isn't the forum for my venting so I think I'll go out and climb a tree. If you watch the news and see a man being darted and falling from a tree-thats me.
Hey I think this is the stuff I use on the autimmune rash I got on tx. Pretty sure but it's my other purse so I have to check (dont want to say pocket book cause I know that makes Marcia nutty ;)
Rocker - you cannot think or look at life this way or you will end up in a nuthouse. Some things we just have to deal with and move on because we cannot control them. You can only control your own life so much and the rest you have to put to faith and just let it go. There really is nothing more to be done because fat cats aren't going to give up all their mice right away in this lifetime.......so we might as well nibble at the cheese and be happy we have that. Seriously.
Rocker, you know life isn't fair.There are babies dying on their mothers breast right now-right this second one is dying. Now another. Now Another! We all know this. I ask myself every day why doesn't somebody do something? The real question is why don't I do something? Not give a few bucks to charity-go do it myself. I wonder....
Marcia, Honey I believe paracetamol is acetaminophen...they are molecularly identical if my memory serves..only the name in most countries is the former, except in the US where it's always called the latter, or tylenol.
But you are right mixing it with other things doesn’t help.
ALL
I'm not familiar with any stats proving what causes the most liver deaths, but I do know that studies indicate the the regular use of almost any painkiller, be it OTC or Rx'd causes an increase in the progression of fibrosis. Inother words, on any pain killer your chances of going faster through the stages of liver disease goes up, and up remarkably if alcohol is also in use.
There's even a couple interesting studies on naltrexone (the drug that cancels out opiates and works on the opiod receptors) that suggest that naltrexone slows the progression of fibrosis and increased endomorphins which aide in the healing process.
I haven't followed that up much because my spine is kinked and inoperable and I have to take something...so...
The issue with pain relief is they all use up the P450 cytochromes and depending on how many and which ones they use up mean either more or less irritation, inflammation and/or oxidation of liver tissue.
Obviously if one needs pain relief something must be used.
But for instance tramadol doubled my ALT/AST numbers. I dropped from 95 to 45 just from discontinuing that one drug, absent any HCV treatment.
Treatment dropped me into the 25-35 range even though I had to substitute 5-10 mg pr day of oxycodone for the tramadol.
Opiates can be a problem for some but they are more liver safe.
Not entirely safe mind you, they also cause some fibrosis.
Every drug we take EVERY drug HAS to pass through the liver and most drugs are metabolized there. Some cause little distress, some are very bad.
Even one dose of some of the early antifungals was shutting down healthy livers not long ago. One bite of the wrong mushroom can do that too...but when a pill makes it to market...that only require healthy people to take ONE PILL to be dead you really start to wonder what's up with washington? (DO NOT take antifungals!!!!
Again, FDA can approve ANY drug which is proven efficacious. Only when the safety
is PROVEN to be in question will they pull it, and even then they are notoriously slow.
Obviously it should be in the interest of drug companies to NOT go to market with safety issues and legal issues to follow. However, even phase 3 trial are rigged.
Rigged how? well look on clinical trials site...notice how all the HCV trials have all these exclusions....many other health problems exclude a person from even being in a study!
Once out in the real world, those optimal conditions don't exist...and then you see that the drugs that worked on mostly healthy people are sometimes Harmful or fatal to folks with one or two other things going on. The same is true for most of these studies.
Meaning if we select the healthiest people, our drug will look pretty safe...but is it?
Why does the FDA allow this? Because they think until you use a drug on tens of thousands you can't know anyway, or because they've been paid off to think that way...one really has to wonder. I beg to differ, reason= you could taylor studies to find out the real numbers, it is true you would see more side effects but you might save a lot of lives, but then, everyone might lose money by not getting enough new drugs to market. Could one make a case for doing this. Yes. Why, because patients desparate for a cure who have diebetes or heart disease should be a part of at least phase 3 trials in order to try to save them, AND in order to spare countless others, and some of them are willing...so to not offer this seems unfair AND selfserving. "well we don't want to hurt them" "well you are planning to give it to thousands or millions of them so I'm not buying it...hello". After all we are adults, we sign informed consent forms, so why say you are looking for contraindications when you exclude more sickly people from the studies? Just asking.
Example: say your new PI drug has a likelihood of causing issues in diebetics or people with high BMI....
You know once the drug reaches the market that many more HCV patients have this issue, more of this and other endocrine diseases exist with us than in the general unifected populace, ergo should you not discover if a couple hundred diebetics can handle it before you unleash it on thousands?
Maybe it's true, no drug company wants to make a diebetic worse of harm their heart...but what good will that heart be anyway to someone with no liver...maybe that's altruistist logic....OR
The money motivator to get drugs in the pipeline that cost 1-6 thousand a month A PIECE !!!! And most of us ended up on several in that price range per month...
well lets just say it ain't a perfect world.
Yes they want to find cures, but yes drug companies pay for these studies and yes they want to make money too..and they must sell a lot of OTC and special chemo and disease drugs to make that happen.
Maybe the only solution would be, leave this as a company "for profit" so there remains motivation for research..but instead of just requiring the DOCTORs to have no association or profit motive (they cannot have any association or own stock, although here insider information rules everyday...it's not a good thig, as Martha might say now...)
but also let's maybe cap the stock options and bonuses that CEO's of these companies can make. We cap congress(well we try) and utility commissioners...why not this when it is more a public safety and public health issue than any other industry?
Allow the stock holders to make their paltry dividends, allow the research to be funded as always, but end the multimillion dollars bonuses based on profit margins and drugs brought to markey...let the lions share of the profits go back into research and not to villas in the Alps....for the sake of humanity, and for the sake of all those orphan diseases out there which could easily have been cured by now were it not for the huge sucking sound of people with Harvard degrees who think they should make 20 mil a year even if thousands more of us lab rats must die for their excess to continue.
2 b continued
Many with HCV complain about how long the approval process takes, but part of the reason is that for every drug that makes it to market, one or two hundred, (or thousand according to the drug lobbyist but consider the source there), don't.
The companies complain, "we threw out 99 drugs and it cost us hundreds of millions to do that"...commendable...but that should not mean that we still let a few through each year that do irreparable harm. Here in lies the dilemma of capitalism, without the profit motive little or no forward progress gets made, which we saw within the USSR during their 70 year experiment, with it, we are still at the mercy of government and individual morals.
It's like a GM employee saying well we put 95% of the screws in...Great, and so your work ethic basically made your cars fall apart, and cost lives...what you want a lollypop for this? Your inabilty to screww things right screwwed all the rest of us. No cigar.
So as a rule, drug companies try somewhat to head off things that may come home to roost, but the need for profit is always an underlying concern. A company can only be as morally responsible as it's ruling members decide it shall be...and as our country has decined morally, it's become more evident that "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is not always the rule.
Because my spinal cord was injured and is permanently bent I must have something to stand, do dishes, or even sit up in a chair for an hour, but I've refused to go on time released versions of opiates. The reason is, if I can tough out a day on 5 mg. only...cutting my pills in half..then I do that, it's better for my liver. Time release will mean
a constant supply, whether your body needs it or not, and will produce more dependence and more liver damage.
I think the rule of thumb should be, if you can stand to do without something, do without it, and if you must take something, then find out what the least harmful choices are.
That goes for cold meds, pain meds, and everything else...even some foods.
My rule for pain is threefold...
1.first a 5 minute rule...if you tough it out, change positions, distract yourself with an activity many times pain passes on its own because the body makes its own painkillers and they are 100 times more powerful than morphine.
2. try heat or cold, sometimes getting warm or applying heat works better than a pill.
3. if all else fails take something, but stop thinking if one is good 2 is better, instead buy a pill cutter and start thinking if one works well a half may work almost as well...and be enough!!
see my P450 thread for more info on this including the invaluable Flockhart tables
and learn how to screen what you are on for yourself.
Before I was diagnosed I read the PDR, from age 18 on, and refused many drugs because of their liver or other organ toxicity, since being diagnosed 2 yrs ago with HCV the effort to screen things myself has redoubled...
WHY?
BeCAUSE FOUR 4, thats right 4 of my docs have tried to Rx me with things known to be hepotoxic Knowing I had stage 4 LiverD...including my hepotologist in one instance.
This when safer choices are available.
The info is too new for most docs to know about all this P450 stuff so it is up to the patients to pull the research if they want to slow their liver injury.
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Hepatitis-C/P450-liver-metabolism-of-drugs-etc/show/792665
as an owner of drug company stock, (because I believe in the system and that good research must go forward,) I still say, at this point, retarded foxes are guarding the henhouses.
mb
The Rich Man and Lazarus
19 “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. 20 But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, 21 desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell[d] from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
24 “Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. 26 And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’
27 “Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, Father, that you would send him to my father’s house, 28 for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’
29 Abraham said to him,
‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’
30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’
31 But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’”
mb
What does that mean?
Went over my head to
The muslim nations as a whole have much lower rates of hypodermic usage than other groups do. Partly due to religious taboos, partly due to a long history of smoking hashish and heroin, which are their preferred methods.
They have the highest rates of HCV due to such abysmal supplies and lack of sterilization. I think JmJm is the one who first clued me to this.
I also read up, queried citizens of these nations with HCV myself, and picked of the brains of 2 friends who cumulatively spent 30+ years in the middle east. Plus my own background and interests include very much a desire to understand middle eastern culture and mind sets.
You don't have to believe me though. I think I'll have to stop using the word muslim though, because everyone thinks it politically incorrect even if you are just stating facts.
I cannot speak for how every middle-easterner got this disease, obviously some in every nation don't fit the generalization. However, the ones who have shared with me privately have confirmed that doctors used needles endlessly, the same needle all day long, and this I believe is the main reason for their tradgically high rates. IMHO and other minds as well. I can't share my PM's directly with you without violating peoples right to be private, but I have no reason to make any of this up.
Not me. But I buy my kid GoodHumors whenever the truck comes by. Does that count?
I am not familiar with the Middle Eastern countries, so I will not comment on them.
Facts? What facts?
So much wisdom and yet so little dough. Is it always like that?
Mike
Certainly both will cause immediate drug addiction for you.
Better to be a poor Christian living in a housing project.
Actually since religion is something only twisted for profit better to be an atheist living in a slum, you will grow happy and healthy and have no addiction or belief issues this way.
Comeon now guys, this thread certainly goes far far beyond any prejudices that people should be having in the year 2009. It seems like an awful lot of incorrect 'ASSumptions' to me
Good grief; where on earth do you get your information?
I interpret this to mean that you’re referring to the general population? As far as I know, Egypt has the highest rate of HCV infection worldwide; this is gauged by HCV antibody results, not RNA results. I’ve seen figures as high as 16% of the general population quoted; and this is purportedly due to mass inoculations conducted by the government for schistosomiasis, not from IVDU.
Perhaps you can cite a resource or study to support your claim of 75-80%?
Bill
Well, which is it? The right to the beliefs or the cirticism of those beliefs?
As a born again Christian I can only say I'm very sorry for us feebs that we are so strong willed we need such devices or we would really run the world (amuck but run it none the less).
its called LOVE
This is the first time I have seen one turn this fast, so someone can get on their Soap Box and claim their religion (Atheism).
I see no relevance to this thread just an opportunity.
It was getting hard to follow there for a while.
I better check with my husband....the Jehovah's Witness from Lebannon.
Lebannon is in the Middle East, right?
Or .... Turkey.... the Muslim country in Europe, or Mali in Africa, etc... etc...
no kidding.
All I said was, and I admitted it was a generalization, that according to those I talked to,
INCLUDING muslims, that their own doctors lack of sterilization is the act that spread this disease in their populaces and why their rates of the disease is off the charts!
How saying OTHERS did this to them can be perceived as predudice is beyond me.
What I said was actually a statement in their DEFENSE...stating most of them did not do this to themselves.
It should also be a warning to us all.
Example: I told my doctor in 85 I want NO blood products due to AIDS (and no detection method for screening blood then.... and woke up with a bag of plasma in my arm..
This for a simple shoudler surgery where I barely bled.
this from a highly respected american doctor...so do I think a lot of people have been victimized by inept medical professional...you bet I do.
My problem was I did not get this in writing, and he did it in spite of my instructions.
Without proof in writing it was his word against mine that I told him NOT to do it.
And now I have HCV..
So I know how frustrated these people are with their doctors, I've been there.
Unfortunately, even today that risk exists everywhere.
Las Vegas had a lazy anesthesiologist this year infect hundreds, and a nurse this week from Colorado was in the news and she infected hundreds.
This is happening everywhere...STILL...in spite of all we know.
I'm done with this subject, and I apologize for my part in adding an adjuct to the subject.
My point, which was germaine to the actual issue in my mind at least, was that a lot of people worldwide are being made sick by bad drugs and bad medical practices!
mb
Thanks for telling me I can drink what do you base that on? Everything I have read indicates the contrary. Tell me Guy and I will be delighted?
Posted: August 20, 2005
1:00 am Eastern
© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com
A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate's rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion.
"Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being," the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.
The court decided the inmate's First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists.
Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, called the court's ruling "a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence."
"Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion," said Fahling.
The Supreme Court has said a religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being. In the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, the court described "secular humanism" as a religion.
Fahling said today's ruling was "further evidence of the incoherence of Establishment Clause jurisprudence."
"It is difficult not to be somewhat jaundiced about our courts when they take clauses especially designed to protect religion from the state and turn them on their head by giving protective cover to a belief system, that, by every known definition other than the courts' is not a religion, while simultaneously declaring public expressions of true religious faith to be prohibited," Fahling said.
What are you talking about? I don’t remember discussing drinking with you.
* Main Entry: athe·ism
* Pronunciation: \ˈā-thē-ˌi-zəm\
* Function: noun
* Etymology: Middle French athéisme, from athée atheist, from Greek atheos godless, from a- + theos god
* Date: 1546
1 archaic : ungodliness, wickedness
2 a : a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity
You are standing by your Religious Convictions rather than submit to A Court’s Ruling. Most all Religious People would do the same