It only took 53 Years to ban Darvocet

Darvon, Darvocet, and other propoxyphene products have been on the pharmaceuticals market in the United States for 53 years, and have been contested for more than half that long – in 1978 the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to initiate a recall of the drug, and the same group repeated its petition in 2006. Although propoxyphene products have already been banned for several years in the United Kingdom and in Europe and a Food and Drug Administration recommended a ban in January of 2009, the FDA has only recently voted to ban propoxyphene from the United States market and protect consumers from some severe Darvocet side effects.
Side effects of Darvocet include heart problems such as arrhythmia and heart attack, as well as the potential for drug addiction, suicide, and accidental Darvocet overdose. Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe of Public Citizen estimates that thousands of propoxyphene patients have been killed by the drug since only 2006, the last time the FDA was petitioned to ban the medication. The Food and Drug Administration, however, maintains that the evidence that propoxyphene can cause heart problems even in otherwise healthy patients comes only recently and in the last period of testing that was done on the product. The risks to the heart come even to patients who are taking the recommended dose, especially if they are elderly.
Doctors across the world agree that there are more effective painkillers than Darvocet and other propoxyphene products, and most of these come with much lower risk of serious harm to the patient. However, since the Food and Drug Administration has waited over three decades from the first petition to finally ban the drug, they have put thousands and even possibly hundreds of thousands of propoxyphene patients at risk of suffering from one or more of the many serious Darvocet side effects.