Health ministry is responsible for 124 deaths related to anti-cancer medicine: JCP

The Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry is greatly responsible for the 124 deaths related to the new anti-lung cancer medicine "Iressa" in the five months since it entered the market.

Akahata of January 27 reported that the ministry rushed to approve the medicine in shortened examination procedures and did not test it properly, despite its promise to the Diet.

The Japanese Communist Party in the Diet last December demanded that the HL&W Ministry inspect the process concerning the examination and approval of this medicine, and the HL&W Minister Sakaguchi Chikara accepted the request. The ministry, however, did not carry out the inspection, using the pretext that experts had not pointed out any problems.

An Iressa tablet is sold for over 7,000 yen, one of the most costly medicines for internal use. Usually it takes more than a year for a new medicine to be approved, but Iressa was extraordinarily approved five months after an application was filed. The country that has approved Iressa is only Japan in the world, based on less than a hundred cases of lung cancer.

Akahata commented that Japan's HL&W Ministry ingratiated itself with U.S. and European giant pharmaceutical companies and multinational companies. The ministry omitted and shortened the testing process to enable these companies to secure profits in a shorter period. This neglect of safety of medicine has caused many deaths from ill-effects. (end)