FDA Considers Banning Acetaminophen-Based Pain Killers

Greg George writes "The FDA has determined that Tylenol enhancing pain killers are dangerous enough to potentially be pulled from the market. Drugs including Vicodin, Hydrocodone, Lortab, Maxidone, Norco, Zydone, Tylenol with codeine, Percocet, Endocet, and Darvocet may be permanently banned from the US market, even if the patient has a prescription from a doctor. The problem is the key ingredient — acetaminophen — can easily damage or destroy a patient's liver if more than 2000 mg are used per day. In many cases that means if you take a pain killer and then take two extra strength Tylenol, you may have gone over the maximum dosage per day."

Comments

Re:Only because of stupid people.

[jlechem]

'The people that are stupid and dont read the bottle that says" DO NOT TAKE MORE THAN XXX in a 24 hour period." It's clear as day on the fricking bottle.'

Not really look at a tylenol bottle. Yeah it says no more then 6 or 12 in a day but it's incredibly tiny and hard to read. And nowhere does it talk about using it with other drugs of that type other then a generic consult your doctor blah blah blah. And who talks about tylenol with your doctor? I means it's been on the market a while and is 100% safe right? I agree there is a lot of stupid shit out there but I feel this case isn't one of them.

Re:not really a ban

[radtea]

No, actually they will still inject, and they will have a higher chance of contracting Hepatitis or HIV.

Yes, but most anti-drug people are arguing from the basis of a puritan's punitive mythology, in which taking drugs is pleasurable and therefore drug takers "deserve" to be harmed. You can see this in puritans of all stripes: environmental puritans are often opposed to safe and effective means of disposal of nuclear waste because they would make nuclear power safer, which would be unacceptable because humans aren't supposed to have access to clean, cheap power, we're supposed to suffer for any pleasure we get, because we "deserve" to.

I have no idea what "deserve" means, other than, "I don't like what you're doing and want to see you get hurt as a consequence of doing it." It's a primitive, pre-scientific concept based on rudimentary rationalizations around social control behaviours in our primate ancestors, I think.