Adverse Drug Effects

CCHR (London) are campaigning to make it mandatory that Pharmaceutical Companies issue black box type warnings of adverse side effects.

This means that adverse side effects would be listed on the outside of drugs, and include information about the official body that collects information on adverse reactions.

The UK Health Minister has now told CCHR (London) that the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) are working on the wording which is to be included by the Pharmaceutical companies on their Patient Information Leaflets (PILs). These are the leaflets that are inserted inside the packaging.

CCHR(London) say:

"This is certainly a progressive step. However, we now need to keep the actions going until "black box" warnings are included on the exterior of the packaging similar to those found on cigarette packets. We are now taking our Petition to the Prime Minister and have duplicated it on the Downing Street website.

We have set a target of 25,000 signatures by January 27th 2009 and to achieve this will require everybody's help!

The steps are simple:

• Read the Petiton

• Sign it
• Forward to family and friends - it concerns them too!

You can go directly to the Petition here.

Once you've signed the petition you get an email with a link that you need to click to confirm that you have genuinely signed the online petition, so look out for that and complete the last step.