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Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2007;298(8):851-852.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

As reports of adverse events from commonly used drugs continue to come to public attention, critics have stepped up demands for new and improved postmarket surveillance efforts.

While the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is rethinking its policies, independent "pharmacovigilance" endeavors are performing their own analyses and sounding alarms about potential dangers of numerous prescription drugs. Investigators in one program, called Research on Adverse Drug Events and Reports (RADAR), hope to improve patient safety through earlier detection of serious adverse drug reactions.

RADAR DETECTIONS

RADAR's principal investigator, Charles Bennett, MD, a hematologist and oncologist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago, has spent more than 8 years tracking down serious prescription drug reactions. His interest began when a family friend was given a potentially fatal diagnosis in 1998. The patient survived, thanks to Bennett's inquiries, which found that the life-threatening thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura was brought on . . . [Full Text of this Article]