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

fiercepharma.com

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

#111

Post by kerkeslager »

maxerickson wrote: post #106
kerkeslager wrote: post #100

GSK didn't make decisions, people made decisions, and those people need to be named and held responsible. Putting this on GSK means that the people who knowingly sold a cancer-causing drug while hiding the risks get away without any consequences. Given this went on for 40 years, probably a lot of those people are retired, and won't even lose pay, bonuses, share price, etc. Meanwhile, assuming this leads to any sort o…

Occasionally dissolving anti-social corporations, instead of preserving jobs and protecting shareholders, would probably give remaining corporations at least a little incentive to keep their activities aligned with the goals of wider society.

Punishing those who aren't responsible harder doesn't solve the problem.

In theory shareholders have the power to prevent this sort of thing, but they don't have the visibility into the daily goings on at a company to see when things like this happen.

Likewise, the vast majority of workers had nothing to do with this decision.

In a more general sense, I do think it's healthy to let companies fail rather than subsidizing non-working business models. But as a means of disincentivizing bad behavior, it's totally ineffective.

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

#112

Post by kerkeslager »

hulitu wrote: post #110
kerkeslager wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who made the actual decision may even be retired, and won't even get a slap on the wrist. Remember: GSK didn't make an unethical decision, people did. Letting those people hide behind a corporation means that workers and shareholders pay the consequences for decisions that were only made by a few people.

I would like to agree with you, but see Volkswagen for an example where this does not apply.

I am not sure I understand what you're saying. Say more?

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

#113

Post by LazyMans »

hrichards wrote: post #104
LazyMans wrote: post #45

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.

I realize you mentioned the South because of the heat and not the food, but as a fellow Southerner who used to also have bad heartburn, may I recommend cutting out ice and sweet tea, if you use them? God, I love them, but I realized after long suffering with heartburn that iced drinks and sugar in my tea was killing my stomach. Cutting these out means I'm now the only member of my family not constantly popping Tums.…

I certainly learned over time what my triggers are. As I've gotten older, anything bad for my body ultimately makes me sick in some way. I have it bad enough now that I'm gonna get it for any reason, it's even become a problem that occurs when I haven't eaten after a while (12+ hr).

Luckily I don't like sweet tea or other full sugar drinks (you can pry diet coke from my dead hands). Hadn't heard about the ice thing though.

My biggest triggers are fatty foods, tomato, chocolate, and palm oil.

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

#114

Post by themitigating »

lostlogin wrote: post #101
themitigating wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the vast majority of medicine produced isn't like this situation how do they have bad track record. Also each company is independent.

They have a bad track record. Look at the controversy section of their wiki, and this is just for GSK. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSK_plc

And? If 95% of the medicine released didn't turn out to be a mistake or the company lied why wouldn't you trust the company.

All you're doing is saying that bad things happened instead of comparing it to the number of non bad things.

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

#115

Post by EarthLaunch »

avereveard wrote: post #76
EarthLaunch wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, this led me down a really interesting rabbithole about age-related dementia and anticholinergic substances. Best tidbits: 1: "Anticholinergic Accumulation: A Slumbering Interaction between Drugs and Food Supplements" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bcpt.12437 2: Chart of medicines with high ACB scores (higher is worse) - you will recognize some of these, such as allergy and anti-nausea med…

Ugh, imodium too.

Yes :( luckily it may be okay, being in the category “Possible anticholinergics include those listed with a score of 1”.

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

#116

Post by lostlogin »

themitigating wrote: post #114
lostlogin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a bad track record. Look at the controversy section of their wiki, and this is just for GSK. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSK_plc

And? If 95% of the medicine released didn't turn out to be a mistake or the company lied why wouldn't you trust the company. All you're doing is saying that bad things happened instead of comparing it to the number of non bad things.

The one hell of an argument. The upside of it is that nearly every terrible thing seems a lot less bad.

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

#117

Post by tyingq »

trashface wrote: post #93

Anyone know why famotidine, a similar med (aka Pepcid) doesn't have this problem? Or does it, and we just haven't heard about it? I took famotidine for years, ironically I kept hearing during that time that Zantac was more effective, but never switched.

It's a different class of drug. Zantac is a PPI (proton pump inhibitor). Other drugs in the same PPI class are Prilosec (Omeprazole) and Nexium (Esomeprazole), and while not recalled, could have similar problems.

Pepcid (famotidine) and Tagamet (Cimetidine) are H2 blockers, another class of heartburn medication, that hasn't shown the same issues.

On the other hand, untreated chronic reflux is a big driver for stomach and esophageal cancers. So it's possible that having taken Zantac for a long time was less risky cancer-wise than not taking anything.

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

#118

Post by throwaway29812 »

MandieD wrote: post #87
marcinzm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

or general anesthesia !

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

#119

Post by TMWNN »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #97
marcinzm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 me…

How is this relevant to the parent comment? Every pill of ranitidine would undergo this process in storage, if I understand correctly. Yet it took 40 years for it to finally be confirmed.

>Every pill of ranitidine would undergo this process in storage, if I understand correctly. Yet it took 40 years for it to finally be confirmed.

Even worse, I have taken ranitidine that I had in storage (not in heat) for more than a year! So this news is all the more alarming.

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

#120

Post by jamesadney »

tyingq wrote: post #117
trashface wrote: post #93

Anyone know why famotidine, a similar med (aka Pepcid) doesn't have this problem? Or does it, and we just haven't heard about it? I took famotidine for years, ironically I kept hearing during that time that Zantac was more effective, but never switched.

It's a different class of drug. Zantac is a PPI (proton pump inhibitor). Other drugs in the same PPI class are Prilosec (Omeprazole) and Nexium (Esomeprazole), and while not recalled, could have similar problems. Pepcid (famotidine) and Tagamet (Cimetidine) are H2 blockers, another class of heartburn medication, that hasn't shown the same issues. On the other hand, untreated chronic reflux is a big driver for stomach…

Zantac (ranitidine) is an H2 blocker, not a PPI.
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