This
page is from a collection of materials
indexed at this website arising from an
investigation and campaign by Brian Deer in The Sunday
Times of London over serious risks and
side-effects from this antibiotic,
marketed under many names, including Bactrim,
Bactrim DS, Septra, Septra DS, Septrin,
Sulfatrim, Septran, SMZ/TMP and co-trimoxazole.
Go to side-effects
homepage
Below are two letters from British
doctors who expressed outrage at the
challenge over a drug they routinely
prescribed
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From:
Dr Peter Newman BSc (Hons); MB.BS; DRCOG; FPCert
Thorpe
Cloud, 6 Lakelands, Hockwold-Cum-Wilton, Norfolk
March 3 1994
Dear Sir,
In your
search for journalistic truth, why do you not
spare a thought for individual people's feelings.
Once again
you produce a story that will scare many
thousands of your readers. Once again you have
jammed the phone systems of many surgeries in the
land. It is not fair to continually print a piece
of sensationalist material.
As a busy
rural General Practitioner, I am not happy at the
implications or the conclusions that you lead
people to draw from your article on
"Septrin/Bactrim".
You mention
the Committee on Safety of Medicines, but you
fail to even mention that the number of serious
adverse events reported should be considered in
the light of the number of patients receiving the
medicine and the benefits derived from treatment.
It is important to mention that adverse events
are monitored by a yellow card reporting system
that to date have been very effective in alerting
clinicians to adverse events of new products.
I find it
intolerable that all you have succeeded in doing
is scaring the majority of my patients, who may
have had some of these antibiotics in the past. I
am all for educating my patients but in any
counselling exercise you must provide the
patients with an informed benefits and risks
analysis and then let the Patient decide, what
course of action is best.
It is wise
to remember that Health Care in Medicine is a
partnership between the Doctor and the Patient
and that informed choice is the way forward.
Lastly, I
think that you are taking a very harsh stance
against one of the many very Ethical
Pharmaceutical Companies based in this country.
They have a very good reputation for high
standard of Research & Development of new
compounds. They have made a significant
contribution to the area of Patient education and
continually strive to keep the Medical Profession
up to date with developments and new information.
From:
Dr Andrew Melhuish, Henley Health Concern,
Wargrave, Berkshire
March 9 1994
Dear Sir,
I am a
fifty-eight year old doctor in Henley and have
read the Sunday Times for most of my life. I am
in fact stopping reading it now, transferring to
The Observer, and thought you would be interested
in the reasons.
A small one
is the size of the paper. Having said that I
understand the pressures on you to produce a lot
of copy - but it is off putting, particularly
when Saturday's Times is also quite bulky. I know
a lot of my friends have stopped getting a Sunday
paper at all because it is so large.
My main
reason however is the article which appeared in
the 27th February edition with regards Septrin -
by Brian Deer. I do feel that a well balanced
paper should give two sides of an issue -
otherwise worry may be produced for readers. As a
GP I know a fair bit about Septrin, which we have
used in the practice for very many years and
which we monitor carefully. It is our second most
commonly prescribed antibiotic behind
Amoxicillin. In addition many of my patients come
out from our local district hospital and from the
major London and Oxford hospitals on this drug.
The
implication of your report was that we are
negligent in prescribing this drug. It maybe that
this is the case but we do have, I think, a well
run organisation which looks at dangerous effects
from drugs run by Professor Bill Inman at
Southampton and also good objective reviews of
drugs through the Medical and Therapeutics
Bulletin which comes out regularly. None of these
have echoed the comments made in the article.
Sulphonamides certainly have their problems - but
they also have real advantages over other
antibiotics, which will be needed if we did not
use Septrin. This however is not really the case
I want to make. I feel that an opinion explaining
the other side of the issue should have appeared
with the article. Certainly the article has
worried many of my patients, particularly a 16.5
year old girl with cancer in her leg, under
treatment from the Middlesex Hospital, and taking
Septrin every day over quite a long period. I do
feel that this has not improved the quality of
what life she has remaining.
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