The FDA has very basic guidelines for taking medicine when pregnant: ask your healthcare professional, and read the labels. However, this advice does very little to help when the majority of medications are not clinically tested for use during pregnancy. Medications are often prescribed "off-label,"...
Hey guys, I’ve started this petition to encourage the FDA to enforce regulated clinicals for drug use during pregnancy. Here’s a preview of the text on the petition:
The FDA has very basic guidelines for taking medicine when pregnant: ask your healthcare professional, and read the labels. However, this advice does very little to help when the majority of medications are not clinically tested for use during pregnancy.
Medications are often prescribed "off-label," meaning that they have not completed the clinical trials to be FDA approved to be used during pregnancy. Without these FDA clinical trials, expecting mothers are put into a lose-lose situation, as they have to choose between their health or that of their future child. This situation is especially stressful for mothers with chronic illnesses such as epilepsy, depression, and asthma, where stopping the medication can mean an increase of health risks, but continuing the medication may mean birth defects, preterm birth, miscarriages, or stillbirths. When these mothers turn to medical professionals for help, the professions have generally little to no information on how the medication will affect the pregnancy.
This petition is being sent to the designated federal officers for the FDA Bone, Reproductive, and Urologic Drug Advisory Committee Kalyani Bhatt and the FDA Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee Philip A. Bautista.
