Lung Cancer Concerns
On April 9, 2008, Pfizer announced in its "Dear Doctor" letter that Exubera may have been associated with lung cancer: of the 4,740 patients who used Exubera in clinical trials, six have developed lung cancer as of April 2008, compared to only one of the 4,292 patients in the placebo group. The association was not statistically significant, and Pfizer maintained in its letter that "Exubera remains a safe and effective medication."
In a letter 18 June 2008, Pfizer informed UK doctors of the above mentioned six cases, noting that they all had a prior history of cigarette smoking and that they were planning to investigate further the "observed imbalance in diagnosed lung cases" with an international observational trial. Pfizer's letter also stated that Nektar had stopped searching for a new marketing partner and therefore Pfizer would withdraw its Marketing Authorisation around September 2008.
Read more about this topic: Inhalable Insulin
Famous quotes containing the words lung cancer, lung, cancer and/or concerns:
“Dylan used to sound like a lung cancer victim singing Woody Guthrie. Now he sounds like a Rolling Stone singing Immanuel Kant.”
—Also quoted in Robert Shelton, No Direction Home, ch. 2, “Prophet Without Honor” (1986)
“Lord, confound this surly sister,
Blight her brow with blotch and blister,
Cramp her larynx, lung and liver,
In her guts a galling give her.”
—J.M. (John Millington)
“I’m beginning to believe that Killer Illiteracy ought to rank near heart disease and cancer as one of the leading causes of death among Americans. What you don’t know can indeed hurt you, and so those who can neither read nor write lead miserable lives, like Richard Wright’s character, Bigger Thomas, born dead with no past or future.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The country is fed up with children and their problems. For the first time in history, the differences in outlook between people raising children and those who are not are beginning to assume some political significance. This difference is already a part of the conflicts in local school politics. It may spread to other levels of government. Society has less time for the concerns of those who raise the young or try to teach them.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)