For all you junkies that just can’t put down that bowl of Cheerios, the FDA is out to save you again. This time they’re looking to make sure you aren’t deprived of the experience of pain.
Just days after turning the screws on General Mills for daring to suggest that Cheerios may lower cholesterol, an FDA kangaroo panel has decided that the pain killing ingredient acetaminophen, the main ingredient in products such as Tylenol should be cut back, and some products containing the ingredient be pulled from the market all together. The claim, which is probably accurate, is that high doses may cause serious liver damage. Not the recommended dose, mind you, but overdoses.Well, how much is too much? Here’s one analyst summing it up:
“The reality is we’ve known for some time that Tylenol plus alcohol is potentially damaging to livers, and we’ve also known that way too much is damaging to livers,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s not a huge surprise.”
Let’s see, way too much Tylenol mixed with alcohol is bad for you. Really? Thank God these people are looking out for us. Then again, if you’ve lost your leg in a roadside bomb, you might want to keep the Vicodin, the Percoset, and the Tylenol coming, no matter what the consequences might be. Well, maybe these clowns at the FDA have some kind of alternative painkiller? Maybe that will save American livers. Or maybe the lower recommended doses will make overdosing so onerous that people will just stop. Too many pills. Sure.
You know Barack Obama did mention that he wanted to abandon the type of healthcare where “evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve” the patient’s health. Well, here you go. Certainly Tylenol will not actually improve health. It mitigates pain. Unnecessary? Well, at least I have my Cheerios-damn! High cholesterol, racked with pain, and on a government run health plan. I can’t wait.
You want somebody to keep the drug companies semi-honest? Don’t look to the FDA then. They approved this stuff in the first place. They aren’t pulling acetaminophen off the shelves, they’re just making it more expensive. Besides, their track record on drug safety doesn’t give me a whole lot of confidence.
There’s such a thing as “continuing research”, you know. See, things chage; we get new information. But that’s always been a hindrance for some conservatives; they want to go back to the “good old days”… when America was a vast wasteland covered in ice!