Every physician knows what a black box warning is. This is a special Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirement to warn doctors about potentially severe drug reactions. Most medicines do not have any black box warnings. Wyeth, a pharmaceutical company, will have to place a black box warning for their drug Phenergan, a medication routinely given for nausea. Phenergan has been on the market for over 50 years. I’ve prescribed it for years with excellent results, and I have never witnessed an adverse reaction. The catalyst for the black box development was a tragic side-effect that a woman experienced in 2000 after receiving an injection of the drug. A physician’s assistant injected the medication improperly into her arm. As a result, she developed gangrene and her right forearm had to be amputated. She argued in court that she was not sufficiently informed about the drug’s risk and the jury awarded her $6.7 million. This past week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Wyeth’s appeal. What
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