More than one hundred deaths in Japan

Blame the killer-pills?

TOKYO – The suspicious deaths are already 124. Probably due to a drug. Which is sold only in Japan. Since the red tablets called Iressa, a medicine against lung cancer, have been put on the market, a long series of deaths has alarmed the Japanese government, which has formed a commission of experts to verify how direct is the link between deaths and drug intake.

It was the same Ministry of Health of Tokyo to announce it, signaling that in just five months, between 18 July last and mid-December, over one hundred people who took the medicine, produced and marketed by the British group AstraZeneca, died.

Iressa tablets, which in Japan have administered to those patients who are not affected by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, is still on the market. AstraZeneca has in fact decided to continue the production and distribution of the drug, even though on October 15th the same company had already pointed out the side effects of the product, and invited the patients to scrupulously respect the instructions for use.

December 25, 2002