Drug safety relies on people like David tackling the Goliaths of big pharma

10th June 2013 By Edwin Gale, University of Bristol In 2001 I met David Graham, an official from the US Food and Drug Administration, in a car park in Washington. I wanted him to shed light on why the diabetes drug troglitazone, or Rezulin, had been available in the US and Japan two years after it was withdrawn from the rest of the world. He told me he’d be “driving a dark blue SUV and wearing a fawn jacket”. Not the conventional way to discuss drug safety with an FDA official. Graham was already too outspoken for the FDA and is one of a handful of people to have taken on big pharma and challenged them on the transparency of their research. Another, Dr Peter Butler, is taking on big pharma over another class of drugs, used to treat diabetes. These agents, known as the incretins, work by imitating or enhancing the action of a natural hormone called GLP-1, and are used by millions of people with Type 2 diabetes to control their blood sugar level. They are worth over £6 billion in annual sales. The issue is the subject of Diets, Drugs and Diabetes, a joint BMJ and Channel [...]