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Department of Health

A serious situation has just been revealed in a report by the university of Sussex, which shows that we have been much too ready to license drugs in this country, compared with the United States. Between 1971 and 1992, nine drugs were withdrawn in the United States because they had serious adverse effects, whereas the figure in this country was 24. In our rush to put drugs on to the market for the benefit of the pharmaceutical companies, we are conducting experiments with those drugs and using the public as guinea pigs, and those guinea pigs often do not survive the experiments.