drug safety

Birth control drugs that were heavily promoted as having fewer side effects are now under scrutiny from the FDA in the wake of new research suggesting that they are more likely to cause blood clots than older drugs.

Do you want your new prescription drugs to be made under last century's oversight? Like it or not, that's likely what you're getting -- or worse -- because increasingly, Americans' medicines are made overseas in place where the oversight isn't up to U.S. standards.

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is recalling packages of Rolaids medicines distributed in Canada after consumers complained of finding materials including particles of metal and wood in the products. McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, said it is recalling all lots of Rolaids...

On Wednesday, a Minneapolis jury ordered Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals to pay an 87-year-old man $1.7 million because its antibiotic Levaquin damaged his Achilles tendons. It was the first verdict from about 2,600 similar lawsuits filed so far.

Recalls of Tylenol, Motrin and Benadryl might have received the most attention, but they were just part of the story as recalls of over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription drugs quadrupled in 2009, and are on track to hit alarming heights in 2010. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported...

An FDA advisory panel recommended approval of Bristol-Myers Squibb's belatacept, an experimental drug used in kidney transplants -- with at least one caveat. It recommended further long-term studies after a full FDA approval.

Pfizer Inc. (PFE) on Friday said it has stopped enrolling new patients in a late-stage clinical trial of its experimental lung-cancer compound with the tongue-tying name of figitumumab. Pfizer made this decision for safety reasons, it confirmed in an e-mailed statement to DailyFinance on Monday...