§ Mr. Carter-Jonesasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list in the Official Report the drugs with adverse side effects which were discovered to have these effects initially as a result of anecdotal information; and if he will make a statement.
§ Dr. VaughanSome 22,000 medicinal products are currently licensed in the United Kingdom, any one of which may cause an adverse reaction in some patients. Some of these effects will originally have been identified over a period of many years as a result of clinical trials, research studies or, in many cases, the reports of reactions based on the clinical experience of individual doctors. I regret that it would be quite impracticable to attempt to identify the nature of the first information on every known adverse effect arising from a medicine.