Vicodin & Percocet May Be Eliminated If The FDA Panel Gets Its Way!

I must have a very high tolerance for prescription drugs because Vicodin did nothing to ease the pain from a wisdom tooth extraction that I had.But,apparently,Vicodin has some powerful pain relieving ingredients that combine acetaminophen with other narcotics.

Acetaminophen can cause liver damage & that fact has the FDA(Food and Drug Administration) panel so worried that they want to reduce the amount of acetaminophen in over-the-counter drugs,such as Tylenol.And they want to ban prescription drugs like Vicodin altogether.

Here's more on the FDA panel's recommendations from Freep.com:

"Government experts called for sweeping safety restrictions today on the most widely used painkiller, including reducing the maximum dose of Tylenol and eliminating prescription drugs such as Vicodin and Percocet.

The Food and Drug Administration assembled 37 experts to recommend ways to reduce deadly overdoses with acetaminophen, which is the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S. and sends 56,000 people to the emergency room annually. About 200 die each year.

“We’re here because there are inadvertent overdoses with this drug that are fatal and this is the one opportunity we have to do something that will have a big impact,” said Dr. Judith Kramer of Duke University Medical Center.

But over-the-counter cold medicines — such as Nyquil and Theraflu — that combine other drugs with acetaminophen can stay on the market, the panel said, rejecting a proposal to take them off store shelves.

The FDA is not required to follow the advice of its panels, though it usually does. The agency gave no indication when it would act on the recommendations.

In a series of votes today, the panel recommended 21-16 to lower the maximum dose of over-the-counter acetaminophen from 4 grams, or eight pills of a medication such as Extra Strength Tylenol. They did not specify how much it should be lowered.

The panel also endorsed limiting the maximum single dose of the drug to 650 milligrams. That would be down from the 1,000-milligram dose, or two tablets of Extra Strength Tylenol.

A majority of panelists also said the 1,000-milligram dose should only be available by prescription.

The industry group that represents Johnson & Johnson, Wyeth and other companies defended the current dosing that appears on over-the-counter products."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.