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Department of Health

I want to give the House a clear example of the disastrous failure of our regulatory system. The Food and Drug Administration in America has claimed that there were 144,000 cases of heart attacks and strokes due to the use of Vioxx. However, in answer to a parliamentary question asking how many bad reactions had been discovered here under the yellow card system, I was told that there were never more than half a dozen a year, and that they amounted to no more than 12. There is evidence of 4 million prescriptions for medicines of this type being prescribed, and if America had not discovered the terrible, fatal side-effects of Vioxx, we would still be using it, and British patients would still be being killed by it.