Only four of these fifty-four doctors felt that DES should not be approved, and the result was that, against the concerns of many of the FDA medical staff, the FDAs drug chief Theodore Klumpp recommended that the FDA approve DES." This excerpt describes how DES was unethically approved and shows that the motivation behind its approval was for the benefit of drug companies rather than the people who were going to use the drug. This approval of DES violates the values of medical ethics, autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice as there was little thought put into how DES would affect its users. The decisions made by the FDA leaders to approve DES without further study and convince doctors to dissimulate their opinions on the use of DES is unethical. Once DES was approved for public consumption the "warnings [for DES were] made available only on a separate circular that patients would not see. Doctors could get this warning circular only by writing to the drug companies and requesting it. Letters between companies and FDA regulators reveal that both groups feared that if a woman ever saw how many potential risks DES might present, she might refuse to take the drug—or else she might sue the company and the prescribing doctors if she did get cancer or liver damage after taking the drug." Women were not informed about the possible effects of DES because doctors and FDA regulators were afraid DES would fail and never be approved costing the drug companies millions of dollars.
Orphenadrine (sold under many brand names) is an anticholinergic drug of the ethanolamine antihistamine class; it is closely related to diphenhydramine. It is a muscle relaxant that is used to treat muscle pain and to help with motor control in Parkinsons disease, but has largely been superseded by newer drugs. This substance is considered a dirty drug due to its multiple mechanism of action in different pathways. It was discovered and developed in the 1940s. Medical use
Orphenadrine is a skeletal muscle relaxant. It is used to relieve pain caused by muscle injuries such as strains and sprains, in combination with rest and physical therapy. A 2004 review found fair evidence that orphenadrine is effective for acute back or neck pain, but found insufficient evidence to establish the relative efficacy of the drug in relation to other drugs in the study.Orphenadrine and other muscle relaxants are sometimes used to treat pain arising from rheumatoid arthritis but there is no evidence they are effective for that purpose.A 2003 Cochrane Review of the use of anticholinergic drugs to improve motor function in Parkinsons disease found that as a class, the drugs are useful for that purpose; it identified one single-site randomised, cross-over study of orphenadrine vs placebo. Although orphenadrine and other anticholinergics have largely been superseded by other drugs; they have a use in alleviating motor function symptoms, and appear to help about 20% of people with Parkinsons. Side effects
Orphenadrine has the side effects of the other common antihistamines in large part.