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Zantac’s maker kept quiet about cancer risks for 40 years

fiercepharma.com

81–90 of 134 posts

Re: Zantac’s maker kept quiet about cancer risks for 40 years

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were possibly poisoned, probably intentionally, by an entity that intended to and did profit by it. You may get a small amount of money if you have the luck and the resources to capitalize on it. There's nothing unique or novel about this situation. Is it surprisingly that it happened or just surprising that it happened to you? This is what we do son, this is what american is for . This is the system working as i…

It's not surprising - I know the points you're making and I agree with them. I'm posing a question I think we should discuss. What should my recourse be? In reality, the absolute harm done to me (if any) is probably very limited. Maybe my lifelong risk of cancer has gone up by some quite small amount. The greater harm is damage to my trust in the organizations that produce my necessary medications. So the recourse is…

Perhaps you could sue them for the cost of cancer insurance, or for the increase in cost of insurance due to increased cancer risk.

Re: Zantac’s maker kept quiet about cancer risks for 40 years

#82
post #55

I was telling a friend how unfortunate it is that I live in the south and kept a bottle of this in my car for over a year. I have pretty bad heartburn issues and used to take it only on occasion. Maybe I'll get $35 from a settlement to go with my cancer one day.

Just as a heads up from a professional semi-chemist: dont ingest anything thats been at car temperatures. Its hot enough to chemically alter things, activate diffusions, speed bacterial growth, etc. Its not hot enough to sterilize what you're ingesting.

What is a professional semi-chemist?

Re: Zantac’s maker kept quiet about cancer risks for 40 years

#83
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except... you still shouldn't use it because it's an anticolinergic linked to dementia in old age, just like Benedryl.

So are most antihistamines. Everything will kill you, no need to get worked up about the infinitesimal risk.

Most later generation ones can't cross the blood brain barrier.

Re: Zantac’s maker kept quiet about cancer risks for 40 years

#84

> Intense public scrutiny on Zantac started in 2019, when an online pharmacy found high levels of a likely carcinogen in the drug and its generics. And the linked article says: > Valisure discovered the link of Zantac and its generics to the carcinogen NDMA during its routine testing of every batch of every medication, and first notified the FDA of its initial findings in June of 2019. On September 13th, Valisure fil…

Online pharmacies that specialize in generic drugs are at risk of having their supplies switched or contaminated because they order from manufacturers with reputations a notch below the big pharma brands whose packaging and product are sourced through a chain of custody that makes switching them out for something else a lot harder. This means that they have to do some inbound quality control to ensure that what they…

This is not quite right. I don't think any other pharmacy tests what they dispense. It's expensive, difficult, and the FDA doesn't seem to appreciate that their risk management strategy is being second-guessed. They recently issued a long warning letter to Valisure for doing it [0].

Note that ValisureRx (consumer pharmacy that dispensed lot-tested drugs) was sold to Medley Pharmacy, which just folded. Valisure is now just a testing lab.

Finally, it's not just a chain of custody thing. Even big generic brands and name-brands source a huge amount of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from China and India.

[0] https://www.fda.gov/media/163682/download

Re: Zantac’s maker kept quiet about cancer risks for 40 years

#85
post #16
post #3

what's crazy to me is how terrible of a track record big pharma has in being even moderately uncorrupted, and yet when it comes to vaccines, sprinkle in a bit of fear and suddenly we're supposed to trust their studies and superbowl commercials.

I would think that, with the number of people who received it, any issues would have been sussed out by now

That doesn't account for long term side effects, that may only be seen years, or decades, later.

Of course, catching covid may also have unknown long term side effects, like how some who caught Spanish flu went on to develop encephalitis lethargica.

Vaccinated or not you're part of what is effectively the largest post marketing clinical study, either as the treatment or control group. Science is fun like that.

Re: Zantac’s maker kept quiet about cancer risks for 40 years

#86
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are most antihistamines. Everything will kill you, no need to get worked up about the infinitesimal risk.

Most later generation ones can't cross the blood brain barrier.

They can cross the blood brain barrier, but just not as much.

https://www.bmj.com/content/321/7260/572.1

17% vs 77%

Re: Zantac’s maker kept quiet about cancer risks for 40 years

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not a well known risk factor at all. Especially not the likes of 1 in 5000, and there's no explanation why it's only affected kids 12-17 and it decreases to almost nil as one gets older.

If you're that concerned about things doctor's don't know about medication side effects then you probably shouldn't take any medicine ever. Almost every single one of them has some random side effect or risk that no one has yet figured out the exact mechanism for. Most aren't even quantified in random studies but simply noted and then utterly ignored. The vaccines being studied so much is why we have actual data on t…

Fun fact: we're still not quite sure how acetaminophen/paracetamol (aka, Tylenol) works! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18811827/

Re: Zantac’s maker kept quiet about cancer risks for 40 years

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you have to sell your OTC medication in a refrigerator, your sales will drop a lot. It's not somewhere people think to look, and the impression is that it's perishable. Which people can appreciate for something like a steak, but not their "safe and usual" medications.

I would gladly refrigerate it if it meant I could still use it. I've never had another acid reducer that works as well for me as Zantac. I have so many major health problems that quite frankly I'll probably be dead before I could get cancer from this stuff.

YMMV, but 20mg famotidine tablets work well for me since Zantac is gone.

Re: Zantac’s maker kept quiet about cancer risks for 40 years

#89
post #65
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that, with the number of people who received it, any issues would have been sussed out by now

ranitidine was a very, very, very widely used drug. Yet it took 40 years!

Exactly.

If you on principle refuse to take any medication or vaccine due to the fact that they almost all have rare, unstudied or potential side effects then that's totally fair. The human body is a very complex thing and every single one of us is different so it's basically impossible to truly know if a drug will have no rare side effects for some sub group. Or at least do extensive deep research on every single medication you take including supplements and over the counter things.

If you only do this for the covid vaccine due to reading too much fearmongering then that just means you're irrational.

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