12 members of a 33-member FDA advisory panel recommended that Avandia, a once popular diabetes drug, be taken off the market. 20 made various recommendations about keeping it on the market but including stronger warnings about the heart risk because they're worried that banning the drug will open up GlaxoSmithKline to lawsuits.*

What?! As I said before, it's been reported that 83,000 excess deaths are linked to Avandia. There is a safe alternative to the drug. The American Diabetes Association, VA, and WHO recommend against using the Avandia. 

So the fact that the company might have to pay for a faulty study that led to the approval of a faulty drug is more powerful to these experts  than the evidence regarding an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and death (18-43% in three different studies). 

Shameful. Utterly shameful. This is not how the system is supposed to work. It's supposed to be for the patients, not for the companies.

There's still some chance that the drug will be pulled in the coming months, but in the meantime doctors aren't likely to be prescribing it, because they have to look the patients and their families in the eye.

 * one member abstained