What price vanity?
Imagine, toxins being deadly!
It seems that there are a group of folks in the world who have overlooked this little fact in the quest for a youthful—albeit frozen—appearance.
But, rest assured, a consumer group is coming to the rescue! They're requesting that the FDA require stronger warnings of the risks inherent in using Botox products.
I want to break this down for you, just in case you've never given this treatment much thought (please let that be so): the name "bo-tox" is the combination of "botulism" and "toxin," which you can figure out pretty easily are nasty things.
But slap a cute name on it, market it by appealing to the age-conscious who want to cling to the face they had as a teenager, and you've got yourself a winner of a product.
The sad fact is that 16 people have died from the injection. And according to the consumer group's analysis of the data, there were 658 reports of bad reactions over a nine-year period when they looked at the two approved products, Botox and Myobloc. Of those cases, 180 had potentially deadly conditions, including pneumonia, fluid build-up in their lungs and difficulty in swallowing.
However, the group believes these numbers are low-ball figures, representing possibly just 10 percent of total cases. That's because it's up to the doctors to let you know of the dangers of these products. Currently, the drug companies are responsible for placing warnings on their labeling, but there are no stringent guidelines. They're not using the standard "blackbox warning" to alert doctors, nor are they including what the citizen's group feels is adequately clear information.
The group is requesting a "black box" label to go onto the packaging of both products. But patients never see the box it comes in, so as a practical matter, the whole idea is a waste of time.
Doctors are the ones most likely to see the new warning. Typically they have their patients sign consent forms, detailing the risks of a procedure. I wonder if a patient, while in the throes of desire for their lost youth, really stops and reads those consent forms closely.
Then again, if you're paying someone to shoot toxins into your face, no warning I can think of would stop you.
