As long as she's resting peacefully now, that's the main.

Vioxx I think is now licensed again, but now with the side-effects described, and is not often now prescribed. The 140k cases of heart disease were those estimated to be attributed to Vioxx rather than simply general heart disease.

Merck were aware of the issue, they hid their findings and systematically intimidated and attacked those doctors and researchers who tried to bring it to light, that's why it took five years for the truth to be found out.

Drugs do have side effects, however those side effects are part of the prescription decision. What Merck did wrong wasn't that they created a drug which helped some but had a risk of heart attack, but that it hid this risk which meant that it was prescribed to some it shouldn't and offered kickbacks to doctors to prescribe this drug ahead of others whilst hiding this risk but also for symptoms it has never been licensed for

The FDA must take some blame here - 80 million people were prescribed this drug 99% of which suffered no side effects and probably enjoyed a much improved standard of 'living' i.e. reduced pain. Merck did hide some the side effects but what cannot be contested the drug did a lot more good than it did harm. If you asked the majority of the patients, knowing the potential side effects and the state of their health, I bet most would still have opted for the treatment.

To see Arthur the broken man he is made it all worth while. The man was only interested in one thing - Arthur, the miners were just puppets in his game. Sadly for Arthur he was outplayed, out thought and out manoeuvred by a far cleverer opponent. He was weighed, he was measured and he was found wanting.

By someone playing with a stacked deck...

That's like blaming the police for Harold Shipman and saying, well he was a good doctor to his patients besides the old lady's her murdered.

Most wouldn't take the treatment knowing the side effects, that's why once the drug was re-licensed most have stuck with a different treatment. We can easily analyse whether your statement is correct, if it were vioxx would be prescribed at similar levels to what it was pre scandal. It isn't, so they wouldn't. Because they didn't.

Your attempted justification of what Merck did, also shows the argument of why big Pharma is one of the industries where the free market simply cannot reign. It wasn't up to the FDA to catch them Merck lied and 60k people died. Merck exploited the limits of regulation and allowed people to die so they could make vast sums of money. The result of free market principles within the pharmaceutical industry is people who would otherwise have lived, dying. They simply cannot be trusted

It appears all his faculties are still pretty much working.
Not like that mad, starry, glazey eyed fooker who is being eaten by cockroaches and maggots as I type.
Mind, she was totally cuckoo well before she left parliament.
You'll even admit to that?

It is now historical fact that Thatcher lied, and communities died. It is fact they danced in the streets when she died. That is her legacy, When you and I are gone and historians look back, they will see a warmongering, poor hating, lying Prime Minister whose citizens danced on her grave, who made her party so nasty, and so hated that even a Global financial crisis and 17 years of Labour couldnt get her party re-elected. She will be the bogeyman of history, a modern King John. She may have won that battle, but she certainly lost the war and no amount of revisionism will change that.

It was 13 years of Labour, it just felt longer.
However, she did win, the only way she'd have lost is if she'd fallen down an open mine shaft in '84. She didn't, she beat the miners and Labour, it was her own party who showed her the door and when Labour won in '97, they lauded her and paraded her on the steps of No. 10.

As is the case with most drugs and most patients. The type of drugs I am on at the moment list the side effects as TB and lymphoma to name a few. Do I worry, of course I do but without these drugs I would be literally bed bound with joints that completely (and literally) fall apart. I also take a drug called methotrexate which is a chemotherapy drug but I don't have cancer, so you can imagine the side effects of this powerful drug.

When I was on my clinical trial the nurses told me that if anyone had anything wrong with them, developed lymphoma or other cancers, even if it was something mild like headaches, then the drug company by law has to list them as a side effect of that drug whether it was or not, as the patient was using the drug when they got that illness.

I would only go back on Vioxx if my current anti inflamatory caused me problems and there was nothing else suitable. Taking powerful drugs like this is a gamble in so many ways. It may or may not work for your condition and you may or may not experience side effects. I suppose currently, I am very lucky in that the only side effect from any drugs at the moment seems to be high blood pressure which is controlled by medication, which in turn has side effects

The RA drug I am on now is fairly new on the market, so we'll have to see in 10, 15, 20 years time what the long term side effects are. I look at it from this angle; if the effect of the medication outweighs the side effects then carry on, if the side effects are just too much and are making you just as ill, come off.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... cheme.html Truly, we're all Thather's children.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... cheme.html Truly, we're all Thather's children.

No point in cutting your nose off to spite your face.
If it was costing the NUM 34 grand a year in rent he'd probably have ended up saving them a fortune in the long term with his tenancy discount to buy.

She beat labour by gifting them 13 years in power? And a party so unelectable even a global financial crisis couldn’t get them a majority? The Tory party is so hated in large swathes of the UK it barely exists, it is shrinking to its heartlands and having to hide behind xenophobia and invented enemies just to keep itself relevant.

And yet, despite your strident accusations is expected to win the next Election.....

Perhaps a period of quiet reflection is called for in the Smokey abode?

expected by whom? even most right-wing organisations have been predicting a labour win for a year or so.

thats why Cameron is throwing a fortune at Lynton Crosby and his dog-whistle policies. Even Michael Ashcroft has Labour winning a majority of about 60 seats.

That's right up there with some of the stupid polls Ajay has come up with.

You were told this was rubbish last week. You had no response.

You have your opinion. Don't make it is shared by the majority when it is not.

So hated that Labour have only averaged a mere 3-6 point lead in various opinion polls?

I see he tried to buy his flat under RTB, what a great socialist!

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25731328Apologies if already linked[/url

Doesn't that conflict with what you have been claiming elsewhere on this forum?

And your links and answers are awaited most eagerly on the fracking thread.

If you can't beat them....

Oh look: he's run away again before posting links to support his claims, and answering questions.

Ignore them?

i did have a response, you pointed to a set of polls, i pointed out the flaws with them and that these had been pointed out before, we all laughed.