Council on Drugs

A.M.A. Council on Drugs, DrugVvaluations, 1st ed., American Medical Association, Chicago, 1971, p. 43. 

Council on Drugs, New drugs and developments in therapeutics, JAMA, 183, 178 (1963). 

Later that year, the outgoing Ford Administration eased the previous federal stand against decriminalization, encouraging discussion of this issue for the first time in a policy statement from the Strategy Council on Drug Abuse. Ford s chief advisor on drugs, Robert DuPont, stated that marijuana was less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and urged decriminalization of limited home production. 

Council on Drugs. Ethionamide. A tuberculostatic agent (Trecator). JAMA 1964 187(7) 527. 

Council on Drugs. A convulsant agent for psychiatric use. Flurotyl (Indoklon) JAMA 1966 196(l) 29-30. 

Council on Drugs. Evaluation of a broad-spectrum anthelmintic thiabendazole (Mintezol). JAMA 1968 205(3) 172-3. 

Figure 4. AMA Registry on Adverse Reactions, 1966. (From Council on Drugs, "Reporting Adverse Drug Reactions,"Journal of the American Medical Association 196[2 May 1966] 144Bj...

The AMA s attempt to centralize and standardize reports on side effects encountered both practical and methodological difficulties. First, members of the committee suspected that physicians only reported a fraction of side effects. Yet neither the committee nor the Council on Drugs had any means by which they could assess how many adverse reactions went unreported, or how many physicians failed to send in forms. As a professional association, the AMA had no mechanism or authority to enforce data collection. Second, AMA committees could not determine how many patients had taken a questionable drug. Efforts to calculate risk profiles were hampered because reports of side effects produced a numerator without a denominator. In other words, the council could not calculate the incidence or frequency of adverse reactions. Council reports reflect frustration with this aspect of its work, and members complained that physicians reported only a small fraction of all cases and the total number of patients receiving a drug was unknown. 12... 

Like the AMA s Council on Drugs, the FDA initially found it difficult to convince physicians and hospital administrators to submit reports of adverse reactions. FDA officials resolved issues of data analysis that plagued the AMA by developing formal methods to codify and compare reports of adverse reactions. Agency officials soon recognized that too much data in a given case complicated... 

Council on Drugs, Reporting Adverse Drug Reactions. ... 

Registry on Blood Dyscrasias, Study Group on Blood Dyscrasias, Council on Drugs, American Medical Association, resume prepared from semiannual tabulation, 1963. 

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