The FDA's recent move was a giant step toward a calamitous new drug approval policy.

Post-approval drug safety surveillance is an extraordinarily difficult task.The Vioxx episode has probably made it more difficult for the Food and Drug Administration to do its job.

New research findings and a thorough reassessment of older research indicate that drugs like Vioxx can have many important benefits and great potential for addressing serious problems.

Two recent books, Marcia Angell's The Truth About Drug Companies and Jerome Kassirer's On the Take are often grouped with other anti-pharmaceutical-industry tracts.