While Bush and his FDA have been sleeping on the job, it appears as though a number of states have taken their citizens' health into their own hands and started to review prescription drugs on their own. The AP's Diedtra Henderson reports:

As Congress and others lobby to create an independent board to review the safety of prescription drugs, a dozen states have been doing just that.

State officials who manage billions of dollars in annual drug purchases joined together in a project to help them comparison shop, picking the most effective and safest choices from a slew of competing drugs. Their efforts had an unexpected result.

By taking a closer look at a half-dozen existing studies, the project raised safety questions about Vioxx as early as 2002. Two of the earliest member states — Oregon and Washington — used that independent analysis to remove Vioxx from lists of preferred drugs that doctors use when prescribing medication for Medicaid recipients.

Oregon has many things to be proud of in this world, and this is one of them.

Dr. John Santa, medical director of the Drug Effectiveness Review Project, said the project has developed into virtually an independent office of drug safety.

The project provides information to the states about the drugs it studies. It's then up to the states to decide whether to act in response to the material it gets.

[...]

The three-year, $4.2 million undertaking provides its now 12 member states credible, systematic and neutral reviews of drug safety and effectiveness, said Santa, assistant director for health projects at the Center for Evidence-Based Policy in Portland, Ore.

The project's members are the states of Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming and two nonprofit health groups, from California and Canada.

In exchange for annual contributions of $96,600, the states have received a dozen reports, including the early warning on Vioxx and a report this fall that compared new-generation antidepressants.

John Kitzhaber certainly had a mixed record as Governor of Oregon and leaves a legacy that is in some areas (especially regarding the budget) that is wanting. Nevertheless, if Kitzhaber is remembered for only one thing, it should be for the aforementioned project that's leading the way in analyzing the effectiveness of drugs. Someone has to do it (Bush's FDA is too tied to the Pharmaceutical industry to do anything), and I'm proud that Oregon is the state doing it.